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DIARY of SECTION VIII 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE 
FIELD SERVICE 



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PRINTED ONLY FOR 

PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION 

1917 



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EDITOR'S NOTE 

The human interest of this record sufficiently justifies 
pubHcation, but it is printed primarily because its story is 
typical of the day's work of every Section in the Field 
Service, and in order that those Americans who have 
given ambulances and such practical encouragement may 
better realize how much their cooperation has actually 
accomplished. 

There are now nine of these Sections attached to the 
Armies of France at various points along the Western 
Front from the Channel to Alsace, and in Salonika. Dur- 
ing the next few weeks six more are being equipped and 
sent out. Of the men immediately going over to drive 
these new cars Chicago University is sending two units 
of twenty-five men each, and the Universities of Leland 
Stanford, Harvard, Wisconsin, and California are each 
contributing a like unit. More than sixty other American 
colleges and universities are already represented. 

While all these men quite realize that their work is 
but a matter of duty to the cause and nation they wish to 
serve, the mere fact of their presence and voluntary shar- 
ing of the risk and labor involved has done much to con- 
vince France of the feeling that really exists for her in 
this country. 

However great the help which new circumstances 

might make it possible for us to render the Allies by men 

and money, we can never offer any truer evidence of 

sympathy than by the service of which these pages bear 

tribute. H. D. S. 

Boston, Massachusetts 
February, 191 7 



MEMBERS OF SECTION VIII 

(At time of writing) 

NAME ADDRESS COLLEGE 

Donald C. Armour Evanston, 111 Yale 

Malbone H. Birckhead New York Harvard 

Jackson H. Boyd Harrisburg, Pa Princeton 

Thomas B. Buffum New York Harvard 

Charles T. Crocker Fitchburg, Mass 

Alden Davison New York Yale 

Arthur G. Dodge Weatogue, Conn Yale 

Charles S. Faulkner Keene, N. H 

Frederick M. Forbush Detroit, Mich 

Oscar A. lasigi Boston, Mass Mass. Tech. 

Leslie P. Jacobs Laramie, Wyo Harvard 

Grenville T. Keogh New Rochelle, N. Y. . . 

Arthur E. Lumsden Chicago, 111 

Austin B. Mason (Chef) Boston, Mass Harvard 

Bertwall C. Read Bloomfield, N. J Princeton 

Randolph Rogers Grand Rapids, Mich. . . 

William B. Seabrook (Diary) . . Atlanta, Ga Newberry 

M. C. Shattuck Bristol, N. H Amherst 

Clarence B. Shoninger New York Yale 

Edward C Sortwell Wiscasset, Me Harvard 

Aubrey L. Thomas Washington, D. C Princeton 

George Van Santvood Troy, N. Y Yale 



CITATION OF SECTION VIII. 



EXTRAIT D'ORDRE N° 80 

En execution des prescriptions reglementaires le Direc- 
teur du Service de Sante du 6^ Corps d'Armee, cite a 
rOrdre du Service de Sante du 6^ Corps d'Armee 
La Section Sanitaire Automobile Americaine N° 8 
pour le motif suivant: — 

"Sous la direction du Lieutenant Paroissien, Robert 
Charles, et du Commandant Adjoint Americaine Mason, 
Austin Blake, la Section Sanitaire Americaine N° 8, com- 
posee entierement de volontaires, a assure remarquable- 
ment le service quotidien des evacuations en allant chercher 
le plus loin possible les blesses, malgre un bombardement 
parfois violent. 

"S'est particulierement distinguee le 23 juin, en tra- 
versant a plusieurs reprises la nappe de gaz toxiques 
sous un feu intense sans aucun repit pendant plusieurs 
heures pour emmener au plus vite aux ambulances les 
intoxiques." 

Q. G. le 4 Aout 1916 
P. O. le Directeur du Service de SantS 



Translation 
EXTRACT FROM ORDER NO. 80 

In carrying out the prescribed regulations the Director of 

the Sanitary Service of the 6th Army Corps "mentions" 

in the orders of the day of that service 
The American Automobile Sanitary Section No. 8, 

for the reason following: — 
"Under the direction of Lieutenant Robert Charles 
Paroissien and of the American Deputy-Commandant 
Austin Blake Mason, the American Sanitary Section No. 8, 
composed entirely of volunteers, has been wonderfully 
efficient in the daily service of removing the wounded, 
going very long distances to fetch them, despite a bom- 
bardment sometimes of great intensity. 

"It especially distinguished itself on June 23, by pass- 
ing through the sheet of poisonous gas again and again, 
without respite, under a sustained fire, for many hours, 
bringing the men prostrated by the gas to the ambulances 
as speedily as possible." 

Headquarters, k August, 1916 
P. O. The Director of the Sanitary Service 



DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

AMERICAN AMBULANCE 

FIELD SERVICE 



Mourmelon le Grand, Monday, May 2p. 

This is to be the diary of Field Section No. 8 of the 
American Ambulance, sent to the front from Paris in 
the summer of 1916, and begun this day at Field Head- 
quarters, where we have become a part of the Sixth 
Army Corps of the Twelfth Division of the Fourth 
Army. We are quartered nine kilometres behind the 
front (between five and six miles), and the click of the 
typewriter is accompanied by the steady booming of 
distant guns. 

But there is a preface that must claim place before 
we tell of our arrival here, or even of our convoy jour- 
ney through the Valley of the Marne — a preface written 
at Paris on wood and steel, with hammer, chisel, and file 
by the members of the section, laboring for days side by 
side with French mechanics and carpenters in the great 
shops of Kellner et Ses Fils, building and equipping the 
ambulance bodies and helping mount them on Ford chas- 
sis — a labor of love which went with whirlwind speed, 
for we were building our own cars, and we knew that 
each screw driven home to its socket by blistered but will- 

1 



2 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

ing hands meant that we were that much nearer the day 

of our departure for the front. 

* * * 

"Non palma sine pidvere" was a proverb that applied, 
in Roman days, to war as well as to Olympic games, and 
"Pas de gloire sans graisse" would make an even more 
appropriate motto for our section. We came expecting 
to don steel helmets, and were handed greasy overalls. 
We accepted the overalls willingly, and now we have the 
helmets, but let us tell of the overalls first. 

It was about the first of May that our section as- 
sembled at Paris in the general headquarters of the 
American Ambulance Hospital in the suburb of Neuilly- 
sur-Seine. The men were ready, but the cars were not. 
The chassis were standing in line in Kellner^s great Car- 
rosserie works, near Sevres, a couple of miles beyond 
the Bois de Boulogne, awaiting the construction of the 
wooden bodies which were only half completed. Kellner 
was short of men and we went to Kellner's. Within 
twenty-four hours men among us who had never swung 
anything heavier than a mashie were working at forge 
and anvil, making heavy iron braces and hinges; others 
drilled holes in the wood and iron; still others screwed 
and riveted the parts together. The sturdy women who 
were working by the hundreds in the place of men who 
had gone to the front stopped building bomb cases and 
handling heavy tools to watch us for an instant from 
time to time and bring us little sprigs of lily of the val- 
ley, "le miiget qui porte honheitr." The French carpen- 
ters, who soon learned that we could work as well as 
they, and faster, became our friends and frequently in- 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE O 

vited US to share the coarse bread and red wine which 
they kept loose in the same box with their tools, by way 
of refreshment between meals. 

In eight days we had completed the work, and in 
another twenty- four hours a squad switched to the paint 
shops and covered the cars with the official battleship- 
gray. On Saturday, May 20, moving pictures were 
taken of the section at work in the shops, and on Sun- 
day morning, May 21, the twenty cars were standing in 
line in front of the hospital at Neuilly, completely 
equipped and ready for the field. 

Among the men of our section who worked as labor- 
ers and mechanics at Kellner's were many who had 
never handled tools before — the section includes profes- 
sional men, business men, university students, Rhodes 
scholars, a minister of the Gospel, a winner of golf tour- 
naments, and even a dramatic and musical critic. Yet 
none of us felt it strange to be working in sweat and 
grease. Indeed, our metamorphosis seemed a slight 
thing when some of us learned that in the great historic 
porcelain works of Sevres immediately across the river 
all art had ceased for the time being, and the men whose 
brains and hands had only a short time before been en- 
gaged in designing plates and vases of marvellous grace 
and beauty were now one and all occupied solely with the 
rude labor of constructing immense rough earthenware 
jars and acid-containers used in the manufacture of high 
explosives. 

No matter what experiences may come to us later we 
shall never forget those days — the early morning rides 
from Neuilly through the Bois, the trees in leaf and 



4 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

flower, the silent lakes with here and there a single swan 
— a splotch of white on the black surface of the water 
beneath tall cypress groves; perfect beauty, perfect 
peace; but the illusion is broken in an instant by the 
sound of a bugle — war is everywhere in France, even in 
the Bois ; five minutes later we swing into the river road 
to Sevres, passing huge convoy trucks covered with im- 
mense, bulging canvas tops, occasional armored autos, 
aeroplanes mounted on auto frames being carried to and 
from the aviation ground across the river — another five 
minutes and we are in the shops amid the clanging anvils, 
rasping drills, the clattering noise of a thousand files and 
hammers; the swan and cypress trees a thousand miles 
away from our thoughts, the red forge-fires burning. 

No, we shall never forget Kellner's. 

* * * 

All things come to him who waits. They told us we 
would probably start Sunday morning. They told us 
we would be sure to start Sunday afternoon. They told 
us to be ready without fail Monday morning. They 
promised there would be no disappointment Tuesday 
morning. It wasn't their fault, but by Tuesday after- 
noon we decided that maybe we would never get away, 
and stopped giving each other farewell dinners. Wednes- 
day morning, May 24, we started. We could not really 
believe it ; but it was true. We shook hands with every- 
body and were photographed by everybody who had a 
camera, and started in convoy for the military camp at 
Versailles. Lieutenant Commandant Charles Paroissien 
headed the procession, and Chief of Section Mason 
brought up the rear. 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 5 

We arrived at Versailles without incident and were 
packed, along with hundreds of other convoys, under the 
trees on the main avenue facing the palace entrance. 
Each man stood at attention beside his car while the line 
was inspected, and afterwards we left our cars and stood 
in military line with other troops for a second personal 
inspection. The inspecting officers seemed pleased, and 
we caught a whispered word to the effect that we ap- 
peared to be the kind of men who could be counted on 
to ''condiiire tres serieusement." lasigi and Girdwood 
were singled out for special attention because of their 
service medals from the Ambulance, and were com- 
mended for coming back to France to enter the service a 
second time. 

We had been told that we would probably leave Ver- 
sailles the same day, but in the light of the unavoidable 
repeated delays at Paris it is not strange that we had a 
thrill of surprise when the announcement came after 
luncheon that we had been assigned to the military park 
at Chalons-sur-Marne, and were to proceed there at 
once. 

And so our first real convoy journey began, to the 
accompaniment of a heavy, driving rain. In the first 
car rode Lieutenant Commandant Paroissien, with his 
French chauffeur, Thibaud, and his secretary Yves Mo- 
reau, who bears the title of "Marechal du Logis"; two 
other French soldiers are permanently attached to the 
convoy; Brigadier Boncharel, orderly to the Comman- 
dant, and Trooper Salaude, the cook (it is rather a pity 
that he cannot drop the "u" and make himself into 
Salade, for the only thing we lack to complete our gas- 



6 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

tronomic content is something fresh and green). After 
the pilot car the twenty ambulances followed, with 
Keogh as file-leader for the first ten and Dodge file- 
leader for the second ten. Charlie Faulkner, who. knows 
more about cars than any other half dozen men in the 
section, tailed the procession with his " camionette," 
while Section-Chief Mason, driving the staff car, held a 
tentative position in the rear, whizzing to the front of 
the convoy when necessary and scouting back and for- 
ward as occasion arose. Through the driving rain we 
went for several hours, the only stops being for one or 
two punctures. 

We were travelling nearly due east, entering the Val- 
ley of the Marne by way of the high road to Provins, 
where we were to spend the night, and traversing one of 
the great agricultural sections of modern France. For 
the first afternoon's run we were not in the military zone 
proper and saw few convoys or soldiers, but what we 
did see impressed us more profoundly with the strength 
of France than any military spectacle could have done. 
Every inch of ground as far as the eye could reach for 
miles and miles of plains and gently rolling country was 
under cultivation, the intensive cultivation which only a 
few farming sections in America can show; green fields 
of wheat and grain, fruit trees in flower, farm houses in 
perfect order, huge barns and granaries bulging with 
last year's yields ; signs of plenty at the present moments, 
and assurance of rich harvests for the coming fall. It 
is true that there were not so many men in the fields as 
in normal times, but old men, boys, and women were 
working everywhere, and we were told that at planting 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 7 

time and harvest men are always sent back in sufficient 
numbers, easily spared from the front, to help in the 
farm work. 

On we went for miles and miles, along splendid roads, 
lined on each side by double rows of shady trees, some- 
times through green wheatfields shot with flaming red 
poppies, then entering forests and emerging again after 
a few miles into the cultivated fields. 

Late in the afternoon the rain passed and the sun ap- 
peared. Punctures were infrequent, stops were few. 
Village after village loomed in sight and then disap- 
peared behind us, the streets always filled with children 
waving and shouting welcome and farewell — until at 
length, toward twilight, the cathedral-crowned hill of 
Provins came into sight. 

There we entered the military zone and slept for the 
first time on straw pallets in a caserne, rolled in the 
blankets provided for us before we started, and which 
we keep as our personal property while we are at the 
front. The beds were hard, but sleep was sweet. 

Thursday morning. May 25, we were up and away 
on the road to Chalon, entering further into the Valley 
of the Marne, travelling the very road on which German 
Uhlan raiders had entered France, to be driven back in 
the great battle that saved Paris and stopped the German 
advance in the early months of the war. 

Soon we began to see wooden crosses dotting the 
field by the roadside, sometimes a single grave, sometimes 
a cluster, sometimes a field full of them. Each cross is 
made from an upright piece of, pine sapling about five 
feet high, with a cross piece of the same wood about 



8 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

three feet in length, the bark still on them, and the name, 

when there is a name, inscribed on a small plank nailed 

to the centre. Some of the crosses stood over barren 

mounds, some were covered with flowers, but beneath 

them all, marked or nameless, lie men who died to save 

France. May their sleep, too, be sweet. 

* * * 

It was near noon of the same day that we entered the 
outskirts of Chalon and stopped in a suburb, between 
high, dust-covered walls, while the commandant and sec- 
tion chief scouted into the city to make arrangements. 
In half an hour they came back with bread, canned meat, 
and wine, announcing that we were to have lunch on our 
cars and then proceed to the barracks. By this time 
friendly crowds had gathered around us in the street, 
and a dear little old lady, with white hair and rosy cheeks, 
came out of her house on the corner to give us all black 
coffee. 

An hour later we entered the gates of an immense 
triangular caserne with hundreds of other cars parked in 
the drill-ground, and became a part of the French army. 
Straw mattresses were given us, each man shouldering 
his mattress and carrying it to a second-story room in 
one of the old wings of the caserne which had once been 
occupied by Napoleon's men, and the Russians of the 
present war had left their record on the walls, the sol- 
diers of the Little Corporal leaving painted inscriptions 
of their victories, and the Russians decorating the plas- 
ter walls with cartoons and silhouettes of camp and bar- 
racks life. It developed toward 2 a.m. that former ten- 
ants of the sleeping quarters had left other and more 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE ^ 

intimately personal souvenirs, and before the night was 

fully over half of our section, led by Chief Mason in 

person, covered from head to foot with bites, figured in 

our first and what we hope will be our only retreat. 

They spent the rest of the night in their cars, itching and 

scratching and waiting for the dawn. 

* * * 

On Friday, May 26, just forty-eight hours after 
leaving Paris, we arrived, after an eventful run of 
twenty kilometres from Chalon, at Mourmelon le Grand, 
a village situated in the plains of Champagne, about 
twenty-five kilometres southeast of Rheims, and about 
nine kilometres behind the trenches. This is to be our 
headquarters as long as the Sixth Army Corps, of which 
we are a part, remains in this sector. 

Just outside the village is a long avenue, lined on 
each side with one-story brick and stone buildings, con- 
structed especially to house the soldiers, and in two of 
these structures we have our offices, dining room, and 
sleeping quarters. Our sleeping room is a long, hall- 
like room with plaster walls, high ceiling, and concrete 
floor. It was absolutely bare when we entered it. We 
have made beds by elevating stretchers a foot or two 
from the floor on wooden supports, and have driven 
nails and old bayonets into the wall on which to hang 
our clothing and roosacks. Old benches and old pieces 
of matting we have appropriated until the place is reason- 
ably comfortable. Our cars are parked in a line at right- 
angles to the avenue, backed against one of the buildings. 

Mourmelon le Grand is in itself an uninteresting vil- 
lage. Built in the plain, its houses are ugly, uniform, 



10 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

plastered affairs, laid out with the mathematical regu- 
larity of a Kansas prairie town; there is no chateau, no 
buildings or ruins of mediaeval times, and the church is 
devoid of architectural or artistic significance. 

But all that Mourmelon may lack in intrinsic interest 
is more than made up for by proximity to the front. We 
hear the big guns booming, and on a quiet night can even 
distinguish the popping of the machine-guns and the 
rifles. Observation balloons are close by, and nearly 
every day the German Fokkers circle- over our heads, ap- 
parently more bent on observation than on throwing 
bombs. The anti-aircraft guns hidden in every direction 
in the fields always open up on them, and it is a beauti- 
ful sight to see the flash of fire and puff of white smoke 
as the shrapnel shells explode at the rate of sometimes ^ 
dozen a minute in the air more or less near the aviator. 

Sometimes they come to drop bombs, and on those 
occasions every man is ordered to hide in the bomb- 
proofs, or at least get within doors or under trees where 
he can't be seen. When the aeroplanes first came the 
soldiers and civilians alike, instead of being afraid, used 
to crowd into the streets and open fields to see the sight, 
and now, to keep the Germans from spotting garrisoned 
villages as well as to protect life, the general staff has 
issued an order punishing with fifteen days in jail any 
person in Mourmelon who is so careless as to let himself 
be hit by an aeroplane bomb. 

On Friday night, the first night of our stay here, the 
Germans tried to take a small position in the little woods 
near St. Hilaire named "Y Greque," and for a short 
time there was heavy artillery firing from the French 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 11 

guns. As darkness came on we not only heard the 
booming of shells and the rattle of machine-guns but 
saw the whole sky in the direction of the lines illumined 
by the flares and rockets. The French flares go high, 
are fairly bright, and last a comparatively long time, 
while the German flares go not quite so high, flare 
noticeably brighter than the French, and go out much 
more quickly. It was to the tune of this bombardment 
that we turned in for our first night's sleep at the front. 
During our first day at Mourmelon, Friday, May 26, 
none of the men went out on duty. Section-Chief Mason 
and Lieutenant Commandant Paroissien made a trip to 
the front to inspect the pastes de secours we were to 
handle, to look over the roads, and to make the acquaint- 
ance of the ^'Medicin divisionaire." . 

* * * Lx^ 

On Saturday, May 27, Section 8 received its bap- 
tism of fire. 

Three cars were called to St. Hilaire, our evacuation 
post eight kilometres from Mourmelon and about two 
and a half kilometres behind the first-line trenches. 
Dodge, Seabrook, and Shattuck drove, and with them 
went lasigi, Davison, and Section-Chief Mason. 

St. Hilaire, a village which has changed hands sev- 
eral times and now finds itself in front of the French 
batteries in easy sight and range of the German guns 
on the slopes opposite, is what the poilus call a ''mauvais 
coin." 

It is a mass of ruins, but evidently was once a charm- 
ing spot, and the approach by the road from Mourmelon 
is still beautiful, though the fields on both sides of the 



12 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

route are scarred with bomb-craters and honeycombed 
with abandoned trenches. For practically the entire dis- 
tance the road is protected from German observation 
by a screen formed of pine limbs and small pine saplings 
strung on wires and rising well over the top of the tallest 
auto truck. 

This road is in easy distance for the German artil- 
lery, but there is only one point which they have been 
shelling during the past month, to wit, the abandoned 
farm of St. Hilaire, three kilometres back from the 
village and now nothing more than an abandoned mass 
of crumbled masonry. However, no shells fell as we 
passed the farm, and in another five minutes we turned 
a curve and caught our first sight of a French village 
totally destroyed by heavy-artillery fire. The approach 
is through a grove, over a lovely little stream with a 
picturesque mill at the left, and one emerges rather 
sharply from the trees into full view of the town. To 
one who had never before seen the effect of heavy high- 
explosive shells the scene was appalling. Some among 
us had seen big floods, fires, tornados and railroad 
wrecks, but there is no form of devastation on earth 
that can compare to a town deliberately and completely 
wrecked by continuous artillery fire. On one side of the 
street the houses were blown into shapeless masses ; the 
stone was not only scattered, but often crumbled into 
dust ; the iron was tortured into fantastic shapes ; the 
woodwork was ashes ; on the opposite side were wrecks 
of houses with one wall or one triangular corner stand- 
ing; others had holes blown through them big enough 
for a two-horse team to drive in, yet still upright; here 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 13 

and there a single house had escaped destruction, but 
served only to emphasize the devastation around it; the 
roof of the church is gone, one half of the nave and 
entire transept is crushed in, and the tower is tottering ; 
it was as if the huge hand of some demon from the 
clouds had lifted the entire village to unthinkable heights 
and in wanton rage dashed it back to earth. 

These impressions crowded on us in the instant that 
we were traversing the village to reach the entrance to 
the trenches and bombproof shelters in which the 
evacuation poste is located. The entrance is immediately 
beside the road, emerging from the village behind a 
half-destroyed house that furnishes shelter from Bosche 
binoculars if not from their big guns. The sergeant on 
duty was standing in the road at the entrance to his dug- 
out, smoking a pipe, and half a dozen of his stretcher- 
bearers were sitting around under the trees. There had 
been little if any firing that morning. 

They told us they had several '"blesses" (even the 
Americans and English call them that in France) to be 
transported back to the hospital near Mourmelon, and 
we made ready to load them into Dodge's car. 

While we were still talking a German shell, and then 
another, and still another, screamed high over our heads 
and exploded somewhere in the woods behind St. Hi- 
laire. In another instant the French batteries located a 
few hundred yards behind us opened up a terrific bom- 
bardment, while more German guns joined in the duel. 

The fire was not directed at St. Hilaire. The enemy 
was firing just over our heads to the woods 300 and 400 
yards behind us, "feeling" for the batteries they knew 
were masked among the trees. 



14 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

"They are not firing at us," explained the sergeant, 
"but a shell timed a fraction of a second early, or fired a 
fraction of a centimetre lower, might land here by acci- 
dent, so we had better get our blesses loaded and away." 

The few more minutes we remained, however, were 
ample to furnish experiences we shall never forget. 
Scarcely had the sergeant ceased speaking when a Ger- 
man shell fell far short of its mark and short of us, too, 
in the field beyond St. Hilaire ; another broke to the right 
a hundred yards or so above our heads, and a third and 
fourth broke so close that the fragments sprayed the 
road where we were standing. One of our party picked 
up a jagged piece still sizzling hot from the explosion. 
Then the Bosche gunners readjusted their range, and 
the shells began to break again, as they intended, in the 
woods behind. 

Descriptions of how one feels under shell fire are 
always inadequate and malapropos, because every man 
feels differently. Close observation of the men of our 
section on this and subsequent occasions seems to show 
that they are alike in only one respect — they all hold 
their ground. For instance, there is one of us, a man 
of unquestioned courage, who "ducks" his head and 
shoulders every time a shell screams over his head; it 
seems to be an involuntary muscular reaction. Another 
becomes garrulous, laughing loud and keeping up a rapid 
fire of jokes, possibly like the negro who whistles as he 
traverses a graveyard. Another man in the section turns 
quite pale, yet keeps his hand and voice as steady and 
his eye as clear as one of Napoleon's grenadiers. 

It may possibly all be summed up in the comment 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 15 

often made in other wars that a man who is not afraid 
of a big shell is simply a fool, and that courage consists 
not in foolhardy nonchalance, but in standing your 
ground and doing your duty. 

The noise of an artillery duel has been described by 
thousands of writers, yet it comes as a surprise to each 
man who hears it for the first time. The crashing re- 
ports of the French soixante-quinze, the roar of the 
bigger guns, the sharp crack of the small shells, and the 
muffled boom of the exploding bombs — all these can 
easily be reproduced in the imagination, by simply multi- 
plying the din of any practice cannonading you may have 
happened to hear at close range in time of peace. But 
what nobody can describe is the shrieking and screaming 
of the shells as they fly through the air over your head 
before bursting. It cannot be described, because there is 
no sound with which it can be compared. It is a sound 
which has no place in things human — a shrieking, cre- 
scendo scream from the shells that are arriving — the last 
diminishing wail of a lost soul from the shells as they 
depart — all mingled at times in an ear-splitting, high- 
keyed symphony of hell in which the bursting bombs 
and rumbling guns furnish the deep bass tones. 

Well, after all, they weren't firing directly at us, and 

we all got back to Mourmelon. 

* * * 

But for some of us the day had only begun. 

On beyond St. Hilaire, two kilometres further in 
the barren land between the batteries and the first line 
infantry trenches, deep in the bowels of the earth is the 
furthest poste de secoitrs, St. Souplet. From that lonely 



16 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

shelter the French ''hraiicardiers" wind their way 
through the labyrinth that leads to the line and bring 
back the wounded on stretchers. It was from this post 
that there came a call in the late afternoon. 

Keogh was sent with his car, and riding with him 
were sent Thomas and Seabrook. 

The cannonading had ceased as they went through 
St. Hilaire, and only an occasional far-distant shot broke 
the silence as they left the ruins behind and entered the 
barren fields. All was dead level except the screen at 
the left of the road. The fields were bare and stony, 
pock-marked with shell-craters, seamed with connecting 
ditches to and from the trenches. The grass was sear 
and withered from continued gas attacks, yet here and 
there a flame-red poppy survived — ''les fleurs des tran- 
che es,'' which many a soldier has sent back from the brink 
of death to the wife or sweetheart who is still waiting 
for the letter which will never come. 

Two kilometres of flatness and desolation, and a 
small, painted board stuck a couple of feet out of a 
trench entrance informed us that we had arrived. 

We left the car in the road behind the screen, possi- 
bly seventy-five yards from the entrance to the poste, 
which is in the field to the right. 

Thomas and Seabrook went to the poste, while Keogh 
remained at his car to do a moment's work on the en- 
gine. All was quiet, and the hrancardiers, emerged from 
the trenches, were smoking their pipes and watching the 
sun set behind the German lines, plainly visible on the 
hills beyond. 

It turned out that there were more blesses than one 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 17 

car could carry; but some of them could sit up, and it 
was decided to crowd as many of them on the car as 
possible, leaving Seabrook at the poste until another car 
could be sent out. 

One of the more badly wounded men was carried to 
the car, and the others were to walk to it. The brancar- 
diers were short of stretchers and asked Seabrook to 
go and help Keogh open the two stretchers which were 
folded in the car. 

As Keogh and Seabrook were unloading the stretch- 
ers to open them on the ground a German ''77'' broke in 
the field to the right, more than two hundred yards dis- 
tant. It seemed to be a stray shell from out of the 
silence, dropf)ed there by hazard. But in an instant an- 
other dropped within a hundred yards, and then they 
began to come thick and fast. 

They were shelling the poste. 

One of the stretchers was jammed and wouldn't open. 
The shells were exploding in the air and on the ground 
from thirty to fifty feet from the car and the fragments 
were whizzing in all directions. The two men were 
crouching fiat on the ground, still working with the 
stretcher, and finally got it opened and in place. They 
yelled back to the poste, and two stretcher-bearers start- 
ed to the car carrying those who were the most seriously 
wounded. They seemed a long time getting there. 
Thomas, who was aiding the other wounded to walk from 
the trench to the car, says that when a shell broke over 
the stretcher-bearers' heads they dropped the stretcher 
to the ground and ran back to the shelter of the trench, 
leaving the wounded man for a moment, but returning 



18 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

to him a moment afterward and carrying him to the 
car. 

The car was loaded and got away safely, with Keogh 
driving, Thomas on the seat with him, and Seabrook 
going back across the field to the post to wait for the 
next car as had been previously arranged. 

The shelling continued, and all the remaining men 
entered the bomb-proof dug-out, which a ''77''' shell 
couldn't have penetrated even if it had landed squarely 
on top. 

It was then about 6.30 p.m. 

For an hour the shells continued to come, breaking 
over and around the poste, raining many splinters and 
small fragments near the dug-out entrance. 

About dark the firing ceased. 

Five minutes afterward the French green flares went 
up, announcing a German gas attack. 

It turned out that the gas was from asphyxiating 
bombs, but the men were compelled to keep their masks 
on for about an hour. The gas was not very heavy, and 
every little while a brancardier would loosen his mask, 
put his nose at the door for an instant and then quickly 
readjust his mask again. 

"Ca pique encore," he would whisper, and all would 
settle down to another fifteen minutes' waiting in the 
stufify gloom of the underground cave. 

Finally the man at the door lifted his mask a little, 
then tore it from his face with a sigh of relief and ex- 
claimed, ^'Ca ne pique plus" 

In the meantime the shelling had been resumed, but 
was intermittent and seemed to be directed further 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 19 

toward the right, though occasional shells still fell near 
the poste. 

In addition to the blesses already in need of attention, 
other brancardiers brought in an artilleryman who 
had been struck squarely in the face with a piece of shell 
casing, and was in a frightful condition. He had a 
chance to live, they said, if he were taken to the hospital 
in time. 

By that time it was nearly ten o'clock. 

The expected second car had not come — blocked, it 
turned out afterward, by a combination of engine trouble 
and a misunderstanding about where it was needed. The 
'phone wires were down. 

Seabrook went to awaken the sergeant of the poste, 
who was in another dug-out a hundred yards away, and 
asked if it would be best to go back on foot to St. Hi- 
laire to get an ambulance. 

"If you are willing, I will give you a hand-cart and a 
brancardier to help you, and you can take the wounded 
man in the cart to St. Hilaire, where you will probably 
find one of your cars stationed," responded the sous- 
officier, "and that will be quicker." 

So they swung the wounded artilleryman on his 
stretcher between the two wheels of the "poussette" or 
hand-cart, and, with three other wounded men stagger- 
ing behind, started in melancholy procession on foot for 
St. Hilaire. 

Flares and rockets were still illuminating the sky 
along the trenches behind; a slight stench of gas was 
still in the air. Sometimes the road was in darkness, 
sometimes lighted by the glare. Occasionally shells 
shrieked overhead. 



20 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

The three wounded men fell behind, too weak to keep 
pace with the cart, and often it had to stop and wait for 
them to catch up. 

The wounded artilleryman could neither speak nor 
see, but was conscious and could understand what was 
said to him. The road was rough, and his moans were 
piteous ; when the cart stopped for a moment, he seemed 
to be pleading for something, but there was nothing to 
do but go on. 

At St. Hilaire they found Rogers on duty with his 

car, and the four wounded men were transported back 

to the hospital, with the artilleryman still alive. 

* * * 

Calm follows storm on an artillery front, and on one 
of the quiet mornings an officer consented to show us 
the batteries in the woods behind the evacuation post. 
Though many of the guns were quite close by they were 
so skilfully screened by trees and brush-heaps, that we 
could never have found them without a guide. 

Birds were singing, the trees were glistening from a 
flurry of rain; the sun was again breaking through the 
leaves around the silent monsters of destruction that 
yesterday had been. 

We surprised the lieutenant of the nearest battery, 
engaged, like Candide, in cultivating his garden. He had 
cleared a tiny spot, a few yards wide, facing the en- 
trance to his bombproof dug-out, and had planted lettuce 
and radishes, with rows of flowers between the vegetable 
beds. He had even built a little wooden bench where he 
could sit and smoke his pipe and dream of his real vege- 
table garden in Provence — for he was a son of the Midi. 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 21 

One of his men was darning socks ; another was mend- 
ing a shirt ; a boy, who looked scarcely more than twenty, 
was amusing himself tossing chunks of bread to a puppy ; 
others were reading books or laughing over last week's 
funny papers from Paris. 

"So you find an opportunity to enjoy life even here," 
one of us said to a grizzled veteran, and, with a smile 
that was half sigh, he responded : 

''Mais il le faiit. On est tue si vite." 

Returning to the dug-out at the evacuation post, two 
of us were invited to remain for luncheon, a ''dejeuner 
dans les tranchees" The dining room, a cave six feet 
under ground, presented a strange combination of luxury 
and dirt. On the wall hung a stained Louis Quinze 
mirror in a tarnished gold frame; a tapestried arm- 
chair, mud-stained and with one leg replaced by a pine 
board, was at the head of a plank table blackened with 
grease and smoke. There was a bottle of champagne, 
but the cups and plates were of battered tin. The place 
was lighted by a four-wicked gasoline lamp suspended 
from the ceiling. It looked like a relic of the Roman 
catacombs, but, as a matter of fact, had been ingeniously 
made by inserting four German rifle-cartridge shells 
horizontally into the sides of a small tin bucket which had 
contained marmalade. One of us carries the lamp back 
to America as a gift-souvenir. 

The attention of our host was somewhat divided 
between us and a cat who was nursing her kittens on 
the straw in a corner. The tiniest kitten, christened 
"Microbe," was brought to the table and introduced to 
the visitors. 



22 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

"The old cat is a wise one," they told us, "and knows 
every ruse of the trenches. You will see her on the roof 
in the sunshine after dinner. She only blinks her eyes 
for our soixante-quinze shells no matter how hot and fast 
they are flying — she knows the sound — but when the 
Bosches begin to reply she is back underground quicker 
than any of us." 

"They do not often send anything bigger than the 
'150' high explosives in our direction," continued the 
speaker, "but let me show you where we all go on the 
few occasions when the marmites are dropping." 

"Marmite" is the name they reserve for the huge 
Krupp shells, the "Jack Johnsons" that make a hole in 
the ground as big as a two-story house. 

They led us by a winding underground passage to an 
inky-black cave, the roof of which had thirty feet of solid 
virgin earth between it and daylight. We were groping 
along the wall while the sous-officier was feeling for his 
matches, when an agonized screech rent the darkness. 
Our guide gave vent to a frightened grunt and leaped 
back as if bitten by a snake. He had planted his foot 
squarely in the stomach of a sleeping stretcher-bearer. 

"Diantre! I thought I had received a marmite in the 

belly," he grumbled, and rolled over to sleep again. 

* * * 

On May 30 and 31, the sky overcast with clouds, and 
rains frequent, they began to move the Sixth Army Corps 
(of which we are a part) away from the Mourmelon 
sector, replacing it with fresh troops who came tramp- 
ing and rolling through the village by the thousands, on 
foot and in auto trucks, while the men and machine- 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 23 

guns of our corps departed, mud-stained and weary, for 
eight days of repose in villages behind the lines, prepar- 
atory to being sent — to Verdun some say, to La Somme 
^ say others. 

We expected our section to be moved on the morning 
of June 1, but on the afternoon of May 31 the sun came 

|i| i out, the sky cleared, a number of Bosche planes flew 
over Mourmelon and got safely back to their lines — 
and from our general staff came word that no more 

' troops could move by daylight. Soon after, a formal 
order came to our section instructing us to leave Mour- 
melon at 2 a.m. and repair to the stable and backyard 

I of the Widow Cueux, in the village of La Veuve, where 
we had been billeted. 

We filed out of Mourmelon in the darkness, run- 
ning without lights, but by two-thirty the dawn was red 

tiis (so much further north is France than our United 

States), and it was broad daylight at 3 a.m. when we 

reached La Veuve, turned down a narrow side street, 

found the Widow Cueux's, parked our cars under the 

^ sycamore trees in a yard that extends into the open fields, 

ti and had our breakfast of black coffee, army bread, cheese 

1 and marmalade, after which we rolled into our cars, 

wrapped in blankets, to nap until lunch-time. 

* * * 

June 2. It is not because we are tired, but simply 
because we belong to the Sixth Army Corps that we find 
ourselves ^'en repos." We are now an integral part of 
the corps, and where it goes we go. In the meantime. 
La Veuve is not such a bad place for a prolonged picnic. 

It is true that the village is squalid; it is also true 



24 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

that the mayor had to order the removal of huge quan- 
tities of stable manure from the Widow Cueux's prem- 
ises before its barndoors opened to receive us; it is true 
that a score of our own huskiest lads had to work with 
shovel and wheelbarrow to make the yard habitable — but 
the squalor of La Veuve has its picturesque qualities; 
the green fields are beyond, and even barnyard smells, 
when mingled with the fresh sweetness of field flowers 
and grass, have certain rustic charm, as Virgil said in his 
Bucolics, reminiscent of childhood summers long ago. 

The sound of guns is faint and far away. The old 
widow sits at her door and watches us pitch our awn- 
ings and build our rough benches and tables under the 
trees. She went through similar experiences under these 
same trees during the Franco-Prussian war, nearly half 
a century ago, and takes our presence philosophically, 
as long as we let her eggs and chickens alone. 

None of us had cared to bunk in the barn. We sleep 
in our ambulances, on stretchers covered by blankets. 

The poilus of the Sixth Corps, after months in the 
trenches, are spending eight days of repose, billeted 
here in La Veuve and in neighboring villages and farm- 
houses. They are revelling in the running water, green 
grass, wild flowers, shade and sunshine, denied them so 
long. Their greatest pleasure is to lie in groups in the 
grass on some hillside, recalling dangers past and vic- 
tories won. Hearing them talk, we learn more than in 
any other way, for they have been through experiences 
that make our exciting times seem tame enough. 

This morning they introduced us to the corporal who 
has "sixteen bullets in his blanket, but not a scratch on 
his skin." 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 25 

He proudly exhibited the blanket, and told us how 
the poilus, when all patent armor devices and bullet- 
proof jackets had failed to deflect the German rifle fire, 
had themselves invented, or rather discovered, the one 
known buffer that no rifle bullet can pierce. 

They take their own heavy sleeping blankets, soak 
them in water, and then roll two or three of them in a 
tight wad, sometimes putting their knapsack in the centre 
of the roll to make it thicker. Crawling along on their 
bellies, pushing the wad of blankets foot by foot in front 
of them, it affords just enough cover to protect them 
from horizontal rifle fire. 

The high-velocity bullets, which neither wood nor 
steel can turn, sink into the soft, soggy, woolen roll and 
die there, harmless as eggs in a nest. 

Many another trick the poilus have learned to save 
their skins, but none so efiticient as the roll of wet blan- 
kets. 

* * * 

Conversation with the private soldiers here furnishes 
convincing evidence that the Germans lost more than 
they gained when they resorted to the deadly gas attacks 
and liquid fire. In the earlier stages of the war, the 
French peasant Pierre had a sort of good-natured, 
scornful sympathy for the German peasant Fritz, and 
occasional true stories filtered from the front of ex- 
changes of friendly words and tobacco between the op- 
posing first-line trenches. At that period, the appeal of 
"Camarade" stopped many a French bayonet as it was 
about to sink into a German breast. But that period 
has passed. It ended with the gas attacks. 



26 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

"Phis de camarades" is an expression we hear every- 
where, and the word Bosche, expressive merely of con- 
tempt, has given place to ''les vaches" or ''les sales 
vaches," which means "cows" in the dictionary, but 
"dirty beasts" in the argot of the trenches. 

Today each French poilu is fighting his own war, 

fighting with a bitter hatred ; fighting to kill. 

* * * 

Section 8 wants a dog — a police dog if we can get him, 
but any dog will do. Every company in ''repos" around 
us has its canine mascot who shared their life in the 
trenches and whom they regard as their comrade-in- 
arms. 

A lieutenant of infantry quartered near us has a 
collie which survived a gas attack in a remarkable way 
the week before we arrived at St. Hilaire. 

"The gas attack came very suddenly, as it often 

does," said the officer, "and some of our men who were 

not quick enough in adjusting their masks are now 

dying in the hospital. I was lucky enough to get mine 

on quickly, and for little Pom, paiivre Men, there was 

no mask. I tried to wrap his head in my overcoat, but 

he struggled out of my arms and, with the instinct which 

the hon Dieu gives animals, buried his nose deep in the 

mud. We watched his scratching with his little paws 

and pushing his muzzle deeper, while we wondered if it 

was any use. And that is how he is still with us, taking 

his repose and enjoying his nap in the grass. Viens, 

Pom. You see, monsieur, how well he carries himself; 

only he still coughs a little — curse the dirty German 

beasts !" 

« « « 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 27 

In all the stones of the trenches we hear this same 
inextinguishable hatred of the enemy. If it be true, as 
some tactician has said, that one must hate to fight effec- 
tively, the individual French soldier has become the most 
dangerous fighting machine in history. It is not merely 
a matter of charging valiantly under orders and carrying 
trenches when ordered to do so ; it has become a personal 
matter with the poihis; each individual is out to kill. 
There has been no brutality on the part of the French 
toward German prisoners or German wounded — but be- 
yond that there is no mercy. 

A certain lieutenant of infantry named E — R — told 
us the following characteristic incident of a sector where 
gas and liquid fire had been employed with cruel effect. 

"I was making my round of inspection on the first 
line, Sunday morning two weeks ago. You will recall 
there was no fighting on that day. It was good to be 
alive. .Birds were singing, the sun was shining, the 
muguet was blooming in the very shell-craters. Church- 
bells were ringing in a distant village. 

"I had just entered a lookout post in the first-line 
trenches when the man at the peep-hole turned and 
whispered to his comrades: 

" ' 'Shh, voila un Boche.' 

" Where ?' 

"There he was in the German parapet, scarcely fifty 
yards away, his head and shoulders in full view — a good- 
looking peasant boy, with ruddy complexion, curly light 
hair and blue eyes. He had forgotten war. He was not 
even looking in our direction. His half-turned face was 
transfigured by the peace and beauty of the sun-lit fields 



(( f\ 



(( (i 



28 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

and he was breathing deep of the morning air. His body 
was swaying slightly and he seemed to be humming some 
folk-song of outre-Rhine. 

"But while I was looking the poilus had sent for 
Pecou, who climbed heavily but silently to the observa- 
tion-post at my side. Pecou is a huge peasant from 
Normandie, slow of speech, with enormous hands and 
little eyes the color of steel. 

'Where is he?' whispers Pecou. 
'Straight before you,' answers a comrade behind 
him. 

"Pecou does not respond, he merely reaches back- 
ward with his huge hand and someone passes him a 
loaded rifle. 

'The rifle cracks. 
'Kamarad, Kapout,' grunts Pecou, and placidly de- 
scends. 

^'Eh, hien, my friends from America, there are four 

million Pecous in France. These are not the same men 

who swapped tobacco for sausages between battles two 

years ago. Perhaps you will not understand Pecou, but 

perhaps you have never seen a comrade dying with his 

lungs full of gas." 

* * * 

June 10. Our ten days in La Veuve, with the sol- 
diers of our division quartered here and in neighboring 
villages, have given us a splendid opportunity to take 
stock of ourselves and also to learn something of the 
men with whom we will be associated for the next few 
months. We are the official ambulance section of the 
Twelfth Division of the Sixth Corps of the Fourth Army. 



«' 



(( i-\ 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 29 

Our division is composed of four regiments of about 
3,000 each, totalling in all some 12,000 men. We are as 
much a part of the division as if we were all born 
Frenchmen. Our rations are furnished by the army ; we 
are under army regulations ; billeted in our sleeping 
quarters by the army ; each of us receives five sous per 
day, the regular pay of the poilu, and each of us receives 
his army ration of pipe tobacco every ten days. 

Back in Paris the American Ambulance furnishes us 
a list of the things we are expected to take with us in the 
field, the list which has been published in America. It 
includes warm clothing, underwear, felt slippers, socks, 
shaving materials, and other personal paraphernalia — a 
good, practical list of useful and necessary things. Before 
we left Paris, the field section office added to it, rolls of 
blankets, mess-kits, cantines — but the tout ensemble of 
our equipment when we left Paris would have been as 
appropriate for a hard auto-camping trip across the 
American continent in time of peace as it is for our 
present purposes here. 

On the first day of our arrival at the front, the army, 
however, added two items for each of us, more im- 
portant than all the rest, viz. : 

One regulation steel helmet. 

One regulation gas mask. 

So here we are, poilus and comrades like the rest, by 
these two tokens, and by the aluminum numbered identi- 
fication tag which we wear on a chain around our wrist. 

Like the rest, but luckier than the rest — for the 
American Ambulance seems followed always by a lucky 
star. On yesterday we learned that two days after we 



30 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

left Mourmelon, a German aeroplane bomb fell beside 
the caserne where we had been parked, wounding five 
of the French Ambulance drivers in the section which 
had taken our place. 

H: 4: H: 

Our Twelfth Division has a new commander, General 
Giraudon, who was presented in a formal review on 
Wednesday, June 7, held in a vast field three kilometres 
north of the village — a spectacle which differed in no 
particular from any banal military pageant at home, ex- 
cept as we remembered what these had gone through 
and what they would have to face again. The regiment 
which we have learned to know best is the 67th, as it is 
quartered in La Veuve. It has been one of the hardest 
hit by the war ; thirty thousand men have passed through 
it during the past sixteen months. As they marched by 
in closed ranks, with band playing and colors flying, we 
could recognize many faces of new-made friends. How 
many of them, we wonder, will be left la-has in the next 
attack; how many will be brought back bleeding and 
broken in our ''belles p elites voiUires" which they have 
gathered around so often in the evening to admire. 

We were merely spectators in the review. An hour 
later the General left his limousine, left his prancing 
steed as well, left his general staff, and came down the 
alley on foot through the mud to our barnyard, accom- 
panied only by an orderly, to "review" his new "section 
sanitaire" 

As we are all under military regulations, we scarcely 
dared to blink an eyelid as we stood stiffly beside our 
cars on his arrival. 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 31 

The General walked along the line and stopped before 
Boyd. We had been given our instructions to stand at 
attention and not salute while under inspection, so Boyd 
stood like a statue, until it became unmistakably evident 
that the General intended speaking to him. Boyd's hand 
then started toward his cap in a salute that was never 
finished. Those of us up the line never will know 
exactly what happened in that embarrassing half-second, 
but an instant later the General and Boyd were shaking 
hands in good American fashion, while words escaped 
Boyd's lips which sounded suspiciously like "How are 
you ?" 

The ice was broken, and when the General left he 
told us he was proud to have an American section in his 
division. 

Our only duties while en repos at La Veuve have 
been to transport occasional sick men in the division 
from their temporary barracks or from our field hos- 
pital to other hospitals in the neighborhood. The only 
excitement we have had since leaving Mourmelon was 
the trip Keogh, Forbush, lasigi, McKee, and Crocker 
made with their cars to La Suippe, carrying division 
officers to the school there where they are being taught 
to fly carrier-pigeons. The pigeons are used when tele- 
phone wires are down. It happened that the Germans 
decided to bombard Suippe that morning, and our men, 
who stationed their cars on a hill about a kilometre from 
the town, witnessed the remarkable spectacle of bombs 
bursting among the buildings, and houses in flames. 

Most of our time here, however, has been spent off 
duty, exchanging visits and souvenirs with the poilus of 



32 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

the 67th. They bring us mementoes of the trenches, 
brass and aluminum time- fuses from the German shells, 
cigar-lighters made from flare cartridges, occasionally a 
button or cantine or hat-band stamped with the Hohen- 
zollern eagles. Often they entertain us with wrestling 
and boxing matches and association-football games in 
the field facing our cars, and one evening we paired off 
a number of matches with the gloves among the men of 
our section, to the great delight of the Frenchmen. 

Our poilu friends have been very much taken with 
the American songs, and every evening they gather in a 
ring before the cars to hear Armour, Jacobs, and the 
other musical members of the section singing to the ac- 
companiment of mandolin and guitars. One night they 
decided it would be appropriate for them to exchange 
courtesies, and they invited the section to the sleeping- 
quarters of one of the companies in a neighboring barn, 
where wine and cakes were served al fresco in the straw. 

While ninety per cent of the French troops are made 
up of simple-minded peasant farmers and workmen, we 
are also making the acquaintance of many men of dif- 
ferent type among them. 

Davison recently "discovered" among the stretcher- 
bearers a well-known Parisian painter, Cardinal-Kolsky, 
who has had more than one canvas in the Salon, and who 
has kept his brushes and tubes with him in the trenches 
for the past fourteen months. He painted a portrait of 
Davison, seated in the twilight in front of a barn door, 
and, on finding it greatly appreciated and admired by 
us all, has had the kindness to paint similar portraits for 
other members of the section. 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 33 

Poets, painters, sculptors, musicians — the flower of 
France — they are all, or nearly all, fighting side by side 
with their horny-handed brothers from factory and 
farm. 

Priests there are, too, in abundance, the "aumoniers" 
or fighting priests, with crucifix in one hand and rifle 
in the other, many of them decorated with the Croix de 
Guerre and Medaille Militaire. One of them, with the 
mud of the trenches still thick on his hobnailed boots, 
celebrated military mass on Sunday morning in the little 
church of La Veuve, praying for comrades left behind in 
the last attack, reading the special litany addressed to the 
God of Battles, ''Deus in hello fortis." 

The church was crowded to its utmost capacity, the 

doorway was thronged, and men were kneeling on the 

steps and in the street. It is said, on good authority, that 

the war has brought more Frenchmen back to the simple, 

trusting Catholic faith of their fathers than any influence 

in the past hundred years. 

* * * 

Dame Rumor whispers that we are to be on the move 
within a day or two. The soldiers have a picturesque ex- 
pression to the effect that they have heard this or that 
"down the chimney pipe," the 'Huyau," a phrase cor- 
responding to our American expression, "A little bird 
told me." The 'Huyau" says we are going either into La 
Somme, near Arras, or to Verdun. But no one knows, 
and no one will know, until we get our marching orders. 

Eh, bien, the whisper in the chimney-pipe has changed 
to the sound of rolling wheels and bugle calls. We are 
going "the Verdun way." This very night we watched 



34 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

our 67th Regiment tramping out of the village in the 

darkness and rain, "hep, hep, hep," and we are to follow 

with the dawn. 

* * * 

Brabant le Roi, June 12. — Fifty kilometres we came 
in cold and rain, in chilling and unbelievable June 
weather, and here we are, quartered for three days in a 
huge stock-farm barn, with Verdun fifty-five kilometres 
further north, and the Revigny railroad head two kilo- 
metres south, in sight among the trees. 

We are still too far away to hear the guns. The 
cackling of barnyard fowl, the lowing cows, and whinny- 
ing horses would make war seem far away, were it not 
for the fact that our barnyard door opens directly on 
the main highway to Verdun. They pass in an un- 
broken procession, night and day — the marching troops, 
the black soup-kitchens, the s o Lr ante- quins e batteries, 
the machine-guns on muleback, the horse and motor am- 
bulances, the huge transport trucks carrying thirty men 
each — reminding" us that over the hills beyond the waving 
wheat fields is being waged the greatest battle in the 
history of the world. 

"And you others?" ask the marching poilus as they 
wave a passing salutation. 

"Yes," we answer, with a new feeling of comrade- 
ship as we look into their serious faces. 

"We too are going la-has." 

*!• I* "P 

June 13. Still at Brabant le Roi. While waiting for 
orders to move we are having leisure to explore this 
neighborhood, which the Germans passed through during 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 35 

the battle of the Marne. Nearly every village was 
shelled or burned, or both, but the extent of the destruc- 
tion varies, and in the majority of the towns strange con- 
trasts are presented, many buildings, and even entire 
streets are still intact and inhabited, while other whole 
sections of the same village are in ruins. 

Revigny, distant only ten minutes' walk through the 
wheatfields, is a typical example. On entering the town 
from the north you see no marks of war. The houses 
are standing, the streets are full of children, even the 
lace curtains are still in the tidy windows, and commerce 
goes on ; but walking a hundred paces further and turn- 
ing to the left you enter another quarter where the 
desolation is complete. For entire blocks, every house 
is crumbled and charred. The cathedral presents a tragic 
spectacle ; the tower is half shot away and tottering. The 
fagade is mutilated by shells. Great holes in the walls 
have been filled up by temporary carpentry, and though 
the interior is partly burned the people of the town still 
worship among the charred benches. On approaching 
the fagade from the square one is struck by the fact that, 
while tower and massive pillars have been crushed, a 
delicately executed porcelain statuette of the Virgin in 
a pale blue robe remains with its serene beauty un- 
touched in the niche above the door. 

Inside the cathedral, above the arch of the left tran- 
sept, hangs what the flames left of a huge wooden cruci- 
fix. The cross is blackened, and of the carved wood 
figure of the Christ nothing remains but a mutilated fore- 
arm and the charred feet, still held in place by the heavy 
nails. 



36 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

It is always the church that suffers, sometimes, as 
the French insist is the case, through the sheer wanton- 
ness of the invaders, but oftener, we are tempted to be- 
Heve, because its thick walls make it the strongest forti- 
fied place in a village, and its tower furnishes a valuable 
post of observation. 

It was in a ruined church at Vaubecourt that we next 
encountered our friend, Cardinal-Kolsky, the artist 
stretcher-bearer who painted our portraits at La Veuve. 
He was seated on a pile of stones amid the ruins, sketch- 
ing what was left of the walls, with three great bells, 
half buried in the grass, in the foreground. While we 
watched him at his fascinating work, a priest told us the 
story of Vaubecourt's destruction. 

It was while the Germans were sweeping forward, 
with the French in retreat. A private of the French in- 
fantry, wounded in the thigh, overlooked by the bran- 
cardiers and unable to follow his retreating comrades, 
went into the church and dragged himself up in the 
belfry to hide from the Germans who were taking posses- 
sion of the village. Later they found him there, lying in 
his blood, beneath the bells (the same bells that are now 
half buried in the grass). They dragged him down from 
the belfry, and though he was almost dead from loss of 
blood and scarcely conscious, they propped him against 
a tree and shot him as a spy, pretending that he had been 
sent into the belfry to observe their movements and signal 
the French artillery. Assuming the same motive, they 
hanged the cure as an accomplice, burned the church, 
killed the mayor, and set fire to the village — all because a 
wounded poilu had happened to choose the belfry as a 
hiding place. 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE Z7 

Only after the war is ended will the world know how 
many nameless little French towns suffered a like fate. 

4c 4s 4e 

It was among the ruins of one of these little villages 
in the Marne that Charlie Faulkner encountered and 
made friends with a fluffy-haired puppy of mongrel breed 
in which the setter seemed to predominate, and straight- 
way adopted him as the mascot of Section 8. 

After the puppy was washed and as many of the fleas 
removed from his hide as possible, the problem of a 
name presented itself. We learned that wine instead of 
water is used at a French christening, and the circum- 
stance gave someone the inspiration to suggest the name 
"Pinard" which is wartime slang for the common red 
wine furnished the men in the trenches. So, while one 
of us held the struggling infant, another poured a can- 
tine of the sour red liquid over his head, and the christen- 
ing took place; the soldiers found both the dog and the 
name so droll that Pinard was destined to become not 
only the mascot of our American section but the joke and 
the pet of the whole division. 

Apropos of the name, we have learned that the French 
of the trenches is not the French of the dictionary. They 
have slang or "argot" expressions for everything. For 
wine, they have three or four slang words of which the 
two most usual are "pinard'' and "pivef* Brandy, or eau 
de vie, is known as "la gniolef' To eat, which is manger 
in regular French, is "hoiijfer" in slang. To run away, 
which in Paris would be se sauver, becomes "se trisser" 
in the trenches, while to be killed, in trench argot is 
"sigouille" An automobile or voiture becomes a "hagn- 



38 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

iolle" A cook or cuisinier becomes a "cuistot" and beef 

or boeiif becomes ''singe/' which Hterally means monkey. 

Some of the boys of our section who are not very 

strong on Fi ench, have anglicized Pinard's name and call 

him "Peanut." 

* * * 

Village of Dugny, June 21. Four kilometres behind 
the city of Verdun. 

We have been here with our division in active service 
since June 18. We will remain here for perhaps a fort- 
night longer, when we will be sent back into repos and 
replaced by a new division. Three weeks is about the 
limit of human endurance. For four nerve-racking days 
and nights our little cars have been climbing to the cita- 
del of Verdun, turning to the right and going into the 
hills among the batteries and bursting shells, to a poste 
de secours in the Fort of Tavannes less than two kilo- 
metres behind Vaux and the first-line trenches. The 
road by which we pass is shelled day and night. Ambu- 
lance drivers have been killed and wounded in the sec- 
tions which preceded us. We have seen men mangled 
by shells bursting a few yards in front of us while we 
have escaped. We have driven our cars over the bodies 
of dying horses. Three of our cars have been pierced by 
shrapnel and shell fragments. Yet not a man among us 
has been touched. Lack of sleep, the continued noise 
of artillery, bad drinking water and the attendant dysen- 
tery have put our nerves on edge, but we are doing the 
work and the one thought in the minds of all of us, when 
we are not too worn out to think at all, is that, come what 
may, we are going to stick it out. 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 39 

It is hard to write about — this Verdun service. 
Those of us who used to laugh at danger have stopped 
laughing. Those of us who used to turn pale have got 
the same set look about the jaws and eyes as the rest, but 
they no longer change color. We don't come back any 
longer and tell each other with excited interest how close 
this or that shell burst to our car — it is sufficient that we 
come back. 

* * * 

We were two days coming here from Brabant le Roi. 
The sun was shining, after fifteen days of rain, and hap- 
pily has continued to shine. The first day, we reached 
Erize la Petite and spent the night there. On the morn- 
ing of June 18 we made the 27 kilometres from that 
point to Dugny, without incident, except that we saw 
more cannon and marching soldiers and auto trucks and 
convoys than we had ever dreamed of in our lives before, 
two steady streams, pouring in and out of the crater of 
fire and death toward which we were travelling. Arriv- 
ing at Dugny we found quarters in a hayloft, so small and 
narrow that we have to walk about on our own beds to 
move from one side of the place to the other. We find 
one big advantage in being in Dugny, to wit, that the Ger- 
mans are not shelling the village proper, but are only 
occasionally dropping bombs around the railroad station, 
which is outside the town and fully half a kilometre from 
where we are quartered. Our cars are parked in the 
crowded village street, while our kitchen and dining tent 
have been installed in a nearby field. 

As soon as we had unpacked, a dozen of us were de- 
tailed to go up to Tavannes, riding on the cars of the 



40 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

departing French ambulance section, to learn the roads. 
Verdun, as everybody knows, is protected by a circling 
range of hills forming a marvellous natural defense, and 
on these hills at salient points are located the outer 
forts. Our service carries us to the northeastern sec- 
tion of this circle, which touches the German lines at 
Vaux. Dugny is in a valley. Immediately on rising to 
the first small hilltop going out of Dugny the city of 
Verdun looms into view, so close that the sheer walls of 
the citadel and the two square towers of the cathedral 
are distinctly visible. We go due north toward Verdun, 
crossing the River Meuse, which flows behind it, skirt- 
ing the city limits on the right, descending a sharp hill 
in the shadow of one of the forts of the city proper — the 
first spot where we come under direct shell fire — and 
then we turn sharply to the northeast, traversing the 
ruined suburb called Faubourg Pave. Emerging from 
the Faubourg Pave the road enters a valley and then 
begins to climb in a northeasterly direction toward Fort 
Tavannes, which is the highest point on the horizon. To 
the right of the road as we mount are the big French 
guns, which fire over our heads. French soixante-quinse 
batteries are mounted for several kilometres so close to 
the road along which we pass that at that place shells pass 
only a few feet over our heads. Some of the cannon 
muzzles project within fifteen yards of our cars. When 
they go off they seem to be shooting into our faces. We 
mount gradually into the hills toward Fort Tavannes and, 
reaching a hillcrest, turn from the main northeast road, 
directly north along a narrow artillery road which runs 
two or three kilometres through a shell-swept wood to 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 41 

the huge fort. These last two kilometres are the most 
dangerous. The poste de secours is in the subterranean 
shell-proof caves of the fort, and our cars enter the shel- 
ter of one of the tunnels in the fort, remaining in this 
shelter while they are being loaded. Then we swing 
through the open courtyard of the fort, emerging from 
another gate and retracing the road back to Dugny. The 
evacuation poste where we bring the wounded is in the 
church here. 

Words cannot describe the desolation of the woods 
around Tavannes. The tree trunks are bare and often 
shattered. Foliage and smaller limbs have all been shot 
away. The ground in every direction as far as the eye 
can reach is furrowed and torn. The few houses we pass 
are masses of crumbled stone. The road itself is little 
more than a succession of shell holes that are made 
during the night and filled up with crushed stone during 
the day while the firing is not so heavy. Dead horses 
and mules lie and rot by the roadside where they fell. 
Here and there are wrecks of ambulances and motor- 
cars, torn by shell fragments, sprayed with shrapnel. To 
the right and left haggard men dart like rabbits in and 
out of invisible boyous, or conducting trenches, through 
which they pass to and from the fighting line. The front- 
line trenches are in earshot over in the next valley, and 
the German artillery is on the next northerly range of 
hills. The German observation balloons, or sattcisses, 
can see our little cars as they climb for the last five hun- 
dred metres toward the shelter of the fort, but whether 
their guns are firing directly and intentionally on us or 
whether it is all simply the systematic bombardment of 
the fort and road we will probably never know. 



42 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

All the above general features of the landscape we 
became acquainted with in broad daylight when we went 
up on the French cars. Our first actual service to the 
fort, however, was destined to occur by night — a night 
which never had a parallel in any of our lives before. 

The hundred and sixty brancardiers, or stretcher- 
bearers, of our section had to be transported from 
Houdainville, near Dugny, to Fort Tavannes, and the 
duty fell to us. Each car made about four trips by night 
during a period of thirty-six hours. It was emergency 
work, performed during the hours when ambulances 
were not supposed to be on the road, on account of the 
heavy ravitaillement traffic, the artillery convoys and 
long lines of troops going to and from the trenches. 
Fully half the distance had to be made in low speed, 
crowded on all sides at certain points by heavy trucks 
and artillery. The Germans were bombarding because 
they knew it was the hour of heavy movement along 
the roads. The French were replying over our heads to 
protect the convoys. As some of us started back down 
the long hill from Tavannes on our first trip, red and 
green flares were sent up from Vaux, the signal of an 
attack and the request for a "tir de harage" or curtain 
of fire, from our closest soixante-quinze batteries. For 
fully a kilometre the whole roadside at our left descend- 
ing, burst into a mass of flame from the muzzles of the 
guns. A gun was stationed every twenty yards, and 
each gun was firing from twelve to eighteen times per 
minute. The noise was horrible and the guns were so 
close that the concussion made the whole earth tremble. 
We knew that all the shells were clearing our heads. 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 43 

Our intelligence told us that we were in no danger from 
our own guns, but an involuntary instinct stronger than 
intelligence made us crouch low over our steering-wheels. 

Some of us remember, silhouetted black against the 
flame, in all the hurly-burly confusion of the rushing 
autos and convoys, the figure of a tall, gaunt trooper, 
pipe in mouth, on a horse rawboned and tall like him- 
self, erect and calm in the saddle, his shoulders squared 
and his head thrown back as if in revery. And when 
some of us, struck by his attitude, lifted our faces toward 
the sky, we saw the stars still gleaming far above the 
fire-swept Verdun hills. 

And there was another horseman on the road that 
night whom two of us will remember when the more 
huge and spectacular aspects of the battle of Verdun 
have been dimmed by time. It was on the second trip 
that night when we were descending the wooded hill 
near the Porte St. Victor at the right of Verdun. We 
were blocked behind a slow-moving artillery battalion, 
while at our left a wagon convoy was mounting. Sud- 
denly there was a grating of wheels, a shrill sound of 
whistles, sharp and distinct amid the thundering guns, 
and all was confusion. A shell had crashed into a tree 
at the left of the road and exploded on contact, some 
fifty feet ahead of us. The tree had crashed across the 
road, wrecking a caisson, while a big shell fragment had 
struck the rider of the wheel horse full in the chest. He 
lay beside the road, mangled as if he had been in a rail- 
road wreck, but still conscious. More horrible than the 
blood, more horrible than the gaping wound, were the 
unnatural sounds he uttered — the wordless, primordial 



44 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

cry of a stricken animal in which there was nothing left 
of human. 

« « 4: 

On such a road it was inevitable that some of our 
cars and some of our men would be touched. We were 
at it night and day without respite. Three of our twenty 
cars were ''eti panne/' and the other seventeen were 
doing the work supposed normally to be done by two 
sections totalling forty cars. It meant that each car had 
to make from five to seven trips per days, so that some 
of our machines were on the road every instant. It was 
during this time of stress that we evacuated five hundred 
and forty wounded from Tavannes Fort to Dugny, a 
distance of fifteen kilometres each way, in twenty-four 
hours, making the record of the war for that particular 
poste. On the night of June 19 Davison answered a mid- 
night Tavannes call and had his car pierced through and 
through with shell fragments as he was entering the fort. 
The following morning, between four and five a.m., as 
Seabrook was leaving the fort with a load of wounded, 
his car was struck in the same way. Both Davison and 
Seabrook were untouched, but one of the wounded men 
in the latter's car was hit in the side by a small frag- 
ment. The same day Lieutenant Paroissien had a nar- 
row escape at Bar-le-Duc, when a piece of an aeroplane 
bomb struck him in the chest, but lodged among the 
papers of a heavy leather pocket-book. In the afternoon, 
Rogers, lying on the grass near our dining tent, received 
a slight surface wound in the leg from a stray piece of 
shell. 

Sp *p, Sj* 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 45 

On the morning of the 20th, the entrance tunnel at 
the Fort of Tavannes was caved in by German "380" 
high-explosive shells. Rogers, Faulkner, Boyd, and Mac- 
Monagle were in the fort at the time, and escaped with 
their lives by a miracle. They were felled to the ground 
by the concussion ; the windows of the cars and even 
part of the woodwork were shattered by the shock, while 
wounded men and stretcher-bearers within only a few 
yards of them were buried under the debris during the 
bombardment. 

The place was no longer tenable as a poste de secours, 
as the Germans had the exact range, with their observa- 
tion balloons in full sight, and they were dropping high- 
explosive shells at will on the fort and on the road enter- 
ing it. So the poste de secours was abandoned and re- 
established in a ruined house known as the Cabaret 
Rouge, three kilometres back on the road, among the 
French batteries. 

About one time each night one of our cars still ven- 
tures on an emergency call to the mass of ruins which 
was Tavannes, but we do not make it any longer as a 
regular poste. And while we were not afraid to go, we 
are glad, for the underground, vaulted tunnels of that 
fort composed a chamber of horrors which we remember 
in our dreams. The floors were mud, the ceiling slimy, 
dripping stone. The light was scant, the wounded were 
so numerous that we had to step over their prostrate 

bodies. The stench was terrible. 

* * * 

So, on June 24, the Cabaret Rouge became our regu- 
lar poste de secours. The picturesque name of the place 



46 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

has a diabolical fitness. Victor Hugo might have named 
it in a moment when his genius was at its height. It 
is bizarre, dramatic, romanesque. 

You are asleep in the straw, perhaps dreaming of 
home. Toward midnight you are awakened by a hand on 
your shoulder, and a whispered voice says : "We are 
going to the Cabaret tonight — the Cabaret Rouge." 

If hell has its theatres and cabarets, the devil will 
do well to pattern his entertainments from the spectacle 
we see nightly at this one. The house is, halfway up the 
slope in a valley. Behind it, in front of it, on all sides 
of it are the French batteries. The German shells are 
bursting in the fields around, while our own guns flash 
and thunder incessantly. Immediately in front of us, 
above the hilltop a couple of kilometres distant, the red 
signal rockets illumine the sky, varied occasionally by a 
white rocket demanding a curtain fire or concentrated 
artillery bombardment at a certain point in the trenches ; 
sometimes a green flare warning us of a gas attack. 
Down from the trenches, along the winding boyous, come 
the stretcher-bearers with their crimson burdens. They 
are deposited on the straw, re-bandaged, given a drink 
of water or cold tea, and loaded into our cars — some- 
times groaning, sometimes shrieking, sometimes silent. 
The wall of the house, with a shell-hole through it big 
enough for five men to stand in, looms dirty red amid the 
flashes of artillery. Red Cabaret, red rockets, red fire, 
red blood. 

4c 4: 4c 

And they keep shelling the road. On the night of 
the 23d, Charlie Faulkner, volunteering to drive a car. 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 47 

had the metal part of the searchhght (which we are not 
allowed to use) smashed by a shell. On the night of the 
24th, Keogh, the laughing, brave-hearted boy we love 
perhaps most of all, came walking back with his arm 
streaming blood. He had been hit less than a kilometre 
up the road from Dugny. He had tried to steer his car 
with one hand, but ditched it on the roadside and man- 
aged to get back on foot. How glad we all were to find 
that by a lucky chance the fragments had missed the bone 
and that the wound was not dangerous. He was ban- 
daged and sent back to the hospital at Neuilly, the hero 
of the hour. 

On the night of the 25th Seabrook broke an axle 
within a hundred yards of Cabaret, and found himself 
stuck in the zone of a gas attack. The Germans were 
sending asphyxiating and chrymogen bombs, and inside 
of an hour many of the men at the poste were dropping 
unconscious despite the protection of their masks. 
Faulkner, accompanied by Ivrou, the French mechanic, 
went to find out what had become of the missing man. 
Coming unexpectedly into the gas zone Faulkner found 
that Ivrou had started without a mask. He gave his 
gas mask to Ivrou and continued to Cabaret, where they 
arrived just as Seabrook, in a half-fainting condition, 
was being put into a wagon. They transferred him to 
their car, and got back safely. 

Our men luckily felt no bad after-effects, but for the 

next twenty-four hours the Dugny hospital was full of 

gas victims, many of whom died. 

* * * 

On June 25 a French ambulance section arrived in 



48 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

Dugny to share the work with us, reducing the amount 
of our labor more nearly to normal. Three days later, 
on June 28, the French section was replaced by Section 1 
of our own American Field Ambulance, so that we now 
have two sections, parked side by side here, with forty 
cars doing the work that we originally had to do with 
seventeen cars. 

During this same period we have temporarily lost 
the following men: Keogh, wounded; Thomas, ill; 
Crocker, ill. All three are at the hospital in Neuilly, and 
we look forward to their return. 

Girdwood and McKee left the section soon after our 
arrival at Verdun and will not return. 

New men in the section, in the order of their arrival, 
are MacMonagle, Read, Lumsden, Harper, and Shoninger. 
MacMonagle came in time to share the first hardships, 
the others after we had been relieved of the double work. 

Since we left La Veuve, our French contingent had 
been increased by the presence of M. Roger, a charming 
gentleman who has succeeded M. Moreau as marechal 
du logis and aide to the lieutenant commandant. M. 
Moreau, however, also remains with us. 

«l» ^ 5JC 

On June 27 Charlie Faulkner saved a French soldier 
from drowning in the swift current of the Meuse, where 
we often go to swim. 

The drowning man had entered the river at a point 
some hundred yards .above where the Americans were 
swimming. At least a score of men were closer to him 
when he began to scream and throw up his arms, but 
they merely gathered on the bank as he was carried past 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 49 

and shouted advice to him. Faulkner went in and got 
him, having to swim against the current and go twice 
to the bottom before he finally reappeared with his bur- 
den. The river was filled with reeds except in the main 
current, and, making his way to the supporting reeds, 
Faulkner shouted for aid, as there was some dangerous 
water still to traverse before reaching solid ground. By 
that time some of the other men were in the water 
helping, with onlookers still gestulating on the bank. 
Finally they decided to aid, and while one of their num- 
ber unwound a long sash from around his stomach, 
another, clinging to the end of the sash, waded out about 
to the depth of his waist and managed to help establish 
connection with the bank. 

The Frenchmen were filled with gratitude and ad- 
miration. "We can't swim like Americans," was one of 
their repeated comments. 

Faulkner, after doing a really heroic thing in the 
water, made a sort of "motion-picture" hero out of him- 
self on land, leaping on a bareback horse and galloping 
across the marshes to Dugny for a doctor and an am- 
bulance. Soon the little Ford came tearing out the road 
in best three-reel-thriller style with Faulkner on the seat. 

We all began laughing, and wondered if he had the 

horse inside. 

* * Hi 

Decidedly, we are going into the artillery if the 
United States is ever unfortunate enough to be at war. 
The infantry soldier of the first line is going through a 
hell every day and every minute, compared to which the 
lot of our friends the artillerymen is a mild sort of pur- 
gatory. 



50 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

There is a soixante-quinze battery in a wheatfield 
near a point where we often stop. When the Germans 
are not shelHng them too hard they sit around in the sun- 
shine, and pick flowers, and take photographs, and invite 
us to have coffee with them. 

Every Httle while their lieutenant emerges from a 
dug-out which is connected by telephone with the first- 
line observation posts, and orders them to place so many 
shells at a certain spot on the map, so many metres dis- 
tant. Each soixante-quinze is capable, when necessary, 
of firing twenty times per minute, so that it is an affair 
of less than five minutes for a battery of four guns, 
working only at moderate speed, to deliver a hundred 
shells as per order. 

Sometimes they are cracking away all the time; on 
other occasions they are idle for hours. 

The artillerymen get their meals regularly; they get 
their mail every day; occasionally a German shell falls 
true and they get killed. But when they are not getting 
killed they are quite comfortable — and we have learned 
that there are a good many things in war worse than 
getting killed. 

Decidedly, if we ever have to fight, we are going to 

join the artillery. 

* * * 

The chief medical officers of the division tell us that 
our little cars are doing great work. We are glad, for 
we have been doing the best we can, and, without know- 
ing it, it seems that we have established some new 
records in this sector. 

Official records of our "best day," June 22, show that 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 51 

in twenty-four hours we transported 555 wounded from 
Tavannes and Cabaret to Dugny, an average distance per 
round trip of twenty-five kilometres. One of our men 
was ill, so that the work was done by nineteen cars, the 
total nineteen making an aggregate distance of 1339 kilo- 
metres loaded, and 1359 kilometres empty, or an average 
of about 142 kilometres per car. Practically all the work 
was done under shell fire. Armour made the best in- 
dividual record, totalling four trips to Tavannes and five 
to Cabaret, carrying a total of 51 wounded. 

During the above twenty-four hours, five of our 
cars were struck and pierced by shrapnel or shell- 
casings, yet not one of our drivers was wounded. 

* * * 

While we were doing our humble but necessary part 
behind the trenches, the men of our division were win- 
ning glory and making history. They went up twelve 
thousand and came back seven thousand, having sus- 
tained more than forty per cent loss in killed, wounded, 
and gas illness; but they did their work. One company 
went up 130 men, and came back seven. 

But the French now have a double consolation — the 
assurance of ultimate victory, and the absolute, definite 
knowledge that the German losses in front of Verdun 
are appallingly greater than their own. 

On the Fourth of July a courier brought us a grace- 
fully worded order from the general staff to the effect 
that because of America's national holiday fifty per 
cent of all Americans on the fighting-line were granted 
a special forty-eight hours' leave — provided the exigen- 
cies of their individual units permitted them to get 
away. 



52 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

Our work here had been growing lighter for several 
days, and it was decided to let half our men go to Paris. 

They were taken in auto to a railroad station fifty 
kilometres back, where they took the train. 

When they returned, laden with chocolate, pastry, 
and fruit. Lieutenant Paroissien met them at the tram 
with a surprise. During their absence Section 8 had 
left Dugny and had gone in convoy to Ancerville, a 
lovely village near the border of the departments of the 
Haute-Marne and Meuse, fully eighty kilometres behind 
the lines, out of sound of the guns, and in a section of 
the country on which the Germans had never set foot. 

It was there that we spent a week, out of sight of 
ruins, out of sound of war, among civilian population, 
dear old women of the best French peasant type, the 
streets swarming with children, the old men cultivating 
the fields, the entire life of the little town going on. The 
only evidence of war was the presence everywhere of 
our soldiers, billeted in the barns and houses wherever 
there was room to sleep. 

Ancerville is a rather large, prosperous, country town, 
and those of us who wished were permitted to rent rooms 
in the private houses and enjoy the unaccustomed luxury 
of a bed with sheets and pillows. 

On Sunday afternoon the band to the 106th Regiment 
assembled in the public square for a concert. Musicians 
exercise the duties of stretcher-bearers at the front, and 
of the thirty whom we had heard play in La Veuve, 
twelve were missing, seven of them killed and the other 
five wounded. They played music from Massenet's 
"Manon" and a part of Tchaikowsky's "Symphonic Pa- 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 53 

thetique." Such strange contrasts does this war offer! 
Last week, the horror of exploding shells mingled with 
the screams and groans of wounded and dying; this week, 
charming music, laughing children, green trees, brooks, 
fountains, singing birds, old women in white caps seated 
peacefully in their doorways shelling peas. 

While in Ancerville the great French fete day, the 
Fourteenth of July, arrived, marking the fall of the 
Bastille and the birth of Liberty. We joined heart and 
soul with our friends of the division in celebrating it. 
Against a hillside, in a grove outside the village, a stage 
was erected, and a carefully rehearsed vaudeville per- 
formance was presented to an audience composed of 
most of the division and most of the village — an audi- 
ence in which men just out of the trenches sat with 
children in their laps, beside admiring country girls and 
motherly old peasant women — an audience that over- 
flowed the space provided for it and climbed into the 
trees on the hillside. 

The programme was in charge of the 106th Regiment, 
and consisted of everything from classic music by con- 
servatory graduates to low comedy by Montmartre 
clowns. The American Ambulance was featured on the 
programme as the ''grande attraction/^ and consisted of 
mandolin and guitar music by Armour and Jacobs, fol- 
lowed by a boxing bout between Jacobs and MacMonagle, 
and another bout between Buffum and Armour. The 
applause was generous and sincere. 

Jacobs also figured on the programme as piano accom- 
panist for a wonderful violinist, and their splendid work 
was, from a serious standpoint, the best feature of the 
programme. 



54 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

As an integral part of the French army, our section 
was furnished with special rations, including champagne 
and cigars, for the quatorze Juillet dinner, and that night 
there was a torchlight procession through the village, in 
which our boys carried lanterns, marching and singing 
side by side and arm in arm with the poilus. 

But, alas ! immediately on the heels of this happy day 
came to our section the first two real chagrins and occa- 
sions for regret we have had since we took the field. 
The first was the news that we were to be separated from 
our division, perhaps permanently, and the second, the 
illness of our Commandant and friend. Lieutenant 
Paroissien, which we trust will not be serious, but which 
has laid him in a military hospital in a neighboring town. 

Shortly after midnight, the morning of July 17, we 
were ordered to leave at dawn. We were to go back to 
Dugny, leaving the division behind, and, after three or 
four hours of fast work, we got everything loaded, and 
filed out of the town. Early as it was, scores of our 
personal friends in the division came to bid us goodbye. 
We were awfully sorry to leave them, and are still 
hoping that the exigencies of war will enable us to re- 
join them later, or enable them to rejoin us. 

After an easy and uneventful run we arrived in 
Dugny, and lined our cars up in the old familiar way 
in the centre of the town near the church-hospital. Our 
quarters are less than one hundred yards from those we 
had before, and somewhat more comfortable. Our work 
is to be the same — in fact, we hadn't been in the town 
five minutes when an orderly came with his little square 
scrap of paper : "Two cars quick to the Cabaret Rouge." 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 55 

So history repeats itself. 

* * * 

The people of Dugny, including the few civilians left, 
remember us and seem glad to see us again — especially 
the little woman who still makes "Cafe chaud a toute 
heure" We brought her a dozen glasses, which she 
needed, and some shirts for her little boy, from Paris. 

But it was the Germans who really gave us the warm- 
est welcome back to Dugny. 

The very evening of our arrival, as we were seated 
under the tent at supper, there was a whizz and shriek 
over our heads, and a "130" shell, the first to ever fall 
actually in the streets of the town, exploded fifty yards 
from our quarters, wrecking four French automobiles. 
We finished our dinner, and then measured off the dis- 
tance. It was exactly fifty paces from where our cars 
are parked. 

The following morning, July 1^, there was conster- 
nation in the section. Pinard was missing. He came on 
Armour's car from Ancerville to Dugny, and had been 
seen frolicking around the street just prior to the time 
the shell broke, but he hadn't been seen since, and now 
there was no trace of him. 

We didn't seriously believe he had been struck by 
the shell, but he had nevertheless completely disappeared. 
It was only by good luck that we ever found him again. 
Armour and M, Roger found it necessary to return to 
Ancerville for a day, and there, exhausted and asleep 
in the straw of the deserted house where we had slept, 
they found Pinard, lonely, miserable, lost. 

Triumphantly they brought him back, and there was 



56 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

joy at his return. Whether he was carried back on a 

passing camion, or whether he started due south when 

the shell burst and never stopped running until he 

reached Ancerville, is a matter of conjecture. 

* * * 

Dugny, Verdun Front, July 25. — The paste de secours 
at Cabaret Rouge, which we are serving again as in the 
latter part of June, has changed in many aspects during 
our absence. The Cabaret sector, which our "Fighting 
Twelfth" occupied when we were here before, is now 
held by a division of African colonials, in which negroes 
and Arabs predominate. Their uniforms are of khaki, 
like our own, and their steel helmets, when they have 
helmets, are khaki-colored too, but everywhere except 
in the first line they prefer to wear their tall red caps, 
w^hich are like the traditional fez, but minus the black 
tassel. They are great fighters and have done some won- 
derful hand-to-hand work around Fleury and the 
Tavannes tunnel. 

Most of the Arab and black colonials are Mahom- 
etans, and insist on praying at mysterious hours regard- 
less of where they are or iA^hat they happen to be doing. 
One of our drivers descending from Cabaret at dawn 
yesterday with a load of wounded, heard a great com- 
motion behind him in the car, and on stopping found that 
a wounded Arab had crawled out of his stretcher and was 
kneeling with his feet unconsciously protruding across 
the face of a Frenchman, praying at a great rate in a 
strange tongue, with the car jolting over the shell holes. 

Another peculiarity of some of our colored allies are 
that they are not particular at all times about having 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 57 

their meat cooked. One morning recently a crowd of 
them just back from the trenches, and ravenously hun- 
gry, grabbed chunks of bloody, raw beef from the hands 
of their cook as he was conveying it to the kettle, and 
ate it with keen relish, while French poilus hurried from 
all directions to witness the strange sight. 

The troops in our sector are now taking many Ger- 
man prisoners, and frequently they stop at Cabaret, a 
hundred at a time, under guard, to rest and get water, on 
their march back to the interior. They are mostly 
simple, haggard peasants, intensely human, and intensely 
grateful for a little kindness — and even the French sol- 
diers who have suffered most terribly seem to realize in- 
stinctively that the terrible indictment of barbarity which 
the world has brought against Prussianism and the 
Hohenzollern military principles in this war, cannot be 
justly laid to the door of these simple Bavarian farmers 
who have fallen into their hands. It is true, nevertheless, 
that the French hate with a bitter hatred all Germans 
in the trenches, but when poor Fritz is wounded, worn 
out, thirsty, and a prisoner, he becomes a different per- 
son. We have seen French soldiers, themselves as 
weary and in need of refreshment as their prisoners, 
carrying water to Fritz and holding his bandaged head 
while the cup is put to his lips before they themselves 
have had water. 

The negro troops cannot comprehend this spirit. 
When a detachment of German prisoners arrives, they 
surround them with laughs and taunts and jeers, and fre- 
quently even dance in their glee. When the French 
guards are not watching too closely they will draw their 



58 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

knives and bayonets, and slily approaching a German, 
will go through all the pantomime motions of running 
him through the body, or cutting his throat, usually 
laughing meanwhile, and breaking into shouts of joy if 
the prisoner shows fear. 

We are all avid for German souvenirs, and so are the 
poilus. The moment prisoners arrive there is a good- 
natured onslaught with scissors and pocket knives, in 
which we are allowed to join, and soon Fritz finds him- 
self divested of all the brass buttons from his sleeves and 
coat-tails. Fritz, besides, is usually perfectly willing, 
and often amused at the operations, particularly as it 
seems to be an unwritten rule to always leave him the 
front buttons, which actually keep his coat in place. 
Some of the buttons are very beautiful, with the Prus- 
sian eagles, or the Bavarian lion. It is an amusing sight 
indeed to see a patient German, standing quietly and 
doubtless wondering what will happen next, with three 
or four poilus, and possibly an American ambulance 
driver, clinging to his coat-tail, and cursing the stout 
thread, which, like everything else German, is strong to 
resist attack. 

Sometimes they are willing to let us take their little 
red-banded vizerless caps (spiked helmets are almost a 
thing of the past) provided we give them some kind of 
head-covering in exchange, but we have never seen an 
American, or Frenchman either, take a cap from a Ger- 
man without asking it and unless the owner was willing. 

4c 4c ^ 

The bombardment of the roads in the neighborhood 
of Cabaret is not nearly so severe as it was in June, and 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 59 

frequently now we are able to sit on the crest of some 
nearby hill in comparative safety and watch the work 
of our batteries, at the same time getting an unobstructed 
view of the occasional German shells which still drop 
around us seeking out the French guns and ammunition 
convoys, but usually in vain. An hour of such observa- 
tion is calculated to make a man wonder whether blind 
chance rules the universe, or whether a special Personal 
Providence ordains every hit and miss. We see, for 
instance, a certain unprotected stretch of road between 
hills a few hundred yards from where we sit. We see 
four German shells land squarely on the road at a certain 
spot, at exact intervals of three minutes. Then we 
discern a wagon train moving up toward that spot in the 
road. The drivers cannot see, as we can, just where 
the shells are hitting. We take out our watches and 
figure that unless they stop, the next shell v/ill be timed 
to get them. The three minutes elapse. The wagon 
train is immediately over the shell-craters. The German 
shell, exactly to the second, whizzes over our heads. 
There is a breathless fraction of a second, while we strain 
our eyes, and the shell breaks at an entirely new point, 
two hundred yards short of the road. Lucky wagon 
train. 

A queer story came to us a couple of nights ago about 
a German wireless message, said to have been picked up 
by a French station over on the other side of Verdun 
near Mort Homme. Rumor said the message was from 
German general staff, announcing that an American 
ambulance unit had been seen by German aviators, work- 
ing the Cabaret Rouge poste, and instructing the German 
gunners not to fire on Cabaret. 



60 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

We began to imagine the fantastic story might be 

true, as it so happened that few shells had fallen close to 

Cabaret during the past forty-eight hours. But just as 

we were beginning to give serious credence to the rumor, 

word came that fifteen men had been killed and fifty 

wounded by shells within a few paces of the post. A 

few hours afterwards, while lasigi's car was standing in 

front of Cabaret, a German *'77" landed within five paces 

of it, luckily doing no damage. No wonder we are now 

laughing at our own credulity. 

* * * 

The wagons, guns, trucks and other vehicles which 
pass Cabaret on the way toward the lines, where they are 
often in direct line of vision from the German observa- 
tion points, have adopted a wonderful, highly fantastic 
system of protective coloring. If the scientist who wrote 
about the tiger's stripes invisible in the canebreak and 
the green lizard blended in the grass, could have seen one 
of these convoys, he could have added an interesting 
chapter to his book. 

The biggest canvas-topped camions or trucks are 
usually painted to represent an old stone wall, or a pile 
of earth and stones. The stones are painted different 
shades of neutral gray, while even the irregular lines rep- 
resenting the mortar or cement are skilfully painted 
in a way calculated to deceive even the observer with 
high-powered binoculars. Cannon carriages, and even 
the barrels of the guns, are often painted dull brown and 
green splotched on the blend with foliage. Some of the 
huge wagons are covered with cane or tree branches, and 
masquerade, like the army in Macbeth, as a moving 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 61 

forest. All white horses are stained pale reddish brown 
and dirty green, like a poorly-done mottled Easter egg. 
Apropos of horses, some of our men were remarking 
the other day upon the curious appearance of the French 
horse-collars, which usually have two immense horns or 
prongs sticking high in the air above the neck, and one 
of the alleged wits of the section suggested that the pur- 
pose might be to make the German aviators think the 

horses were cows ! 

* * * 

Dugny, July 27. — When the bombardment of our 
road through the woods just outside Verdun became too 
heavy, we now take another route, entering the Porte St. 
Victor and traversing the city itself, emerging later from 
a second gate and thence through the Faubourg Pave to 
Cabaret Rouge. We also receive occasional special calls 
to a hospital in Verdun, and consequently have had rare 
opportunity to see the deserted city, long since abandoned 
by all civilians and inhabited now only by a few soldiers, 
military guards, and wolfish dogs. 

The city retains its rugged mediaeval grandeur in 
spite of, or rather perhaps enhanced by, the ravages of 
the enemy's artillery. In one quarter, including the cen- 
tral business district, all the buildings are in ruins, while 
in other quarters whole streets are practically intact, with 
^only here and there a single house caved in by a chance 
shell. 

Verdun, a compact city of normally perhaps 20,000 
inhabitants, crowns a hill rising from the Meuse, and is 
still surrounded by its old walls. The cathedral, with its 
two square towers, still stands at the highest point, and 



62 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

may be seen for miles around. Its windows are all shat- 
tered, and many surrounding smaller buildings have been 
wrecked, but only two shells have actually struck the 
church, and from a distance it still appears untouched. 
On entering the ruined part of the city, one is re- 
minded of Pompeii, not merely because of the terrible 
loneliness and silence, but from the mute evidences on 
every hand of the sudden and unprepared flight of the 
population. In some of the stores on the main business 
street the whole front of the buildings has been sheered 
away, yet inside, among the fallen fragments, fragile 
goods are still seen exposed on counters as if for sale. 
In a cafe, the billiard balls and cues are still in their 
racks- on the wall, though a shell which came through the 
opposite wall has destroyed the tables. In a drug-store 
there are shelves, along which tiny piles of shattered glass 
at regular intervals show where the bottles used to stand. 
In a millinery window, delicate be-flowered and be-rib- 
boned hats, like dust-covered flowers on their slender 
stem-like pedestals, stand untouched within a few feet 
of huge walls which have crashed to earth. In a second- 
story room of a dwelling house which has been half shot 
away, a candle-stub with its blackened wick still stands 
before the shattered mirror on the mantel, and the bed- 
covering still lies as it was thrown back in haste by the 
departing owner. Despite the silence, despite the deso- 
lation, it is almost impossible to believe that these people 
have been gone for months. Intimate signs of life are 

everywhere, though life itself has departed. 

* * * 

Though the work here as a whole is not as dangerous 
as in June, some of the men have had some rather nar- 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 63 

row escapes since we returned. Gartz had a piece of 
shell through the top of his car yesterday, and Keogh was 
missed less than two feet by a fragment that struck the 
seat beside him. Keogh had another narrow escape a 
day or two ago at Cabaret, when a brancardier with 
whom he was in conversation was wounded by shrapnel, 
while numbers of shells apparently intended for us have 
fallen dangerously close to our cars on the Route d'Etain 
beyond Bellevue farm, in the Tavannes neighborhood. 

The Route d'Etain call, which can only be made 
at night because it is closer to the lines and in direct view 
of the Germans, is perhaps the most dangerous we are 
now making. We usually send two cars there between 
darkness and dawn, and the realness of the danger is 
emphasized by the fact that we are continually warned 
not to smoke cigarettes beyond Bellevue farm on account 
of the danger of the tiny red glow being seen, and not 
to speak in loud tones for fear of being heard in the 
mysterious silences which sometimes occur even in the 
heaviest bombardment. 

Our duty is to wait with our cars at a certain point 
in the road until the stretcher-bearers bring the wounded 
from a shelter one and a half kilometres further on, 
carrying them that distance on their shoulders, but occa- 
sionally some of us have volunteered to leave our cars 
and go with the stretcher-bearers on foot when they 
needed a helping hand. On such trips, there are usually 
four bearers to each wounded man, and the stretcher is 
hoisted on our shoulders. It is on these rare walks, with 
no noise or distraction from an automobile, that we are 
best able to hear and see the more intimate sounds and 



64 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

flashes from the trenches. Here for the first time we 
have heard rifle bullets singing; have seen the trench 
rockets go up so close that they seem to be almost over 
our heads ; and have heard the shrapnel breaking at close 
range. 

It is in this general zone that the black soup-kitchens 
on wheels are brought, with their already steaming caul- 
drons of potage and cofifee ; and they are met by the poilus 
who scurry up through the connecting trenches, with 
their buckets and canteens to carry food back to their 
comrades. The soup-kitchen work is extremely dan- 
gerous, for if a rocket happens to show one of them on 
the road the Germans will sacrifice more ammunition on 
it than they would be willing to use to destroy a whole 
company of men. Next to actually holding the trenches, 
the keenest struggle on both sides is to get food into the 
first lines and to prevent the enemy from doing so. 
When we are close to the front we have learned from 
experience that it is safer to be near a battery than near 
a "cuisine rotdante/' as they call them. 

* * * 

The real hero of Verdun and of the war is the poilu, 
or infantry soldier, of the first-line trenches. The des- 
tiny of France is in his keeping. The immortal slogan, 
''Vous ne passerez pas" was coined in the trenches, and 
the triumphant, "On les aura," which has replaced it in 
these latter days, was likewise born of the poilu. 

The man in the trenches is the essential factor. The 
rest of us back here among the batteries and observa- 
tion points and pastes de sec ours are engaged solely in 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 65 

the work of backing up his efforts. Whether generals, 
artillerymen, stretcher-bearers, or ambulance drivers, we 
are here only to protect and serve the man out yonder — 
preparing the way before him with shell and shrapnel 
when he advances — transporting him back, covered with 
blood and mud and glory, when his work is done. 

History will tell what the holding of Verdun means 
for civilization and what it has cost France; but only 
those of us who have been here will ever know what it 
has meant for the individual soldier. They are not 
merely dying for their country. They are enduring 
things beyond the limit of human endurance, and still 
living. Where all semblance of trenches and shelter 
have been destroyed, the line is still firm. Where fortifi- 
cations of earth and stone have not availed, flesh and 
blood have held fast. 

One of the men in the ranks of our division, Joseph 
Bonvin we will call him, has told us something of what 
Verdun meant to him, and his experience multiplied by 
twelve thousand is what it meant to our division. His 
story is worth telling, because it is typical. 

When we first made his acquaintance he was lying 
under a tree at La Veuve, inhaling the perfume of a rose, 
watching the summer twilight deepen over the wheat- 
fields, speculating in undertones with his comrades on 
whether the division would be sent to Verdun or La 
Somme. We all knew pretty well it would be one or the 
other, for the Twelfth is one of the great "fighting 
divisions" of the Sixth Corps, and is technically known 
as a '^division d'attaquef' Joseph guessed it would be 
Verdun, and one night soon afterward the Verdun call 



66 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

came. Aroused at midnight by the bugles, with his 
twelve thousand comrades, Joseph marched out of Le 
Veuve at 1 a.m. in the darkness and rain, "pan, pan, 
pan," through the mud, his back bent beneath rifle, mess- 
kit, knapsack, blanket-roll, cantines, cartridge-belt, 
weighing in all some 45 pounds. Some of us shook hands 
with him as he filed past the church corner, and we 
wished his load could have been lighter. 

He marched till dawn, and about sunrise arrived at 
the railroad station of H — , where they loaded him, 
with some of his comrades, into a box-car marked in 
white letters, "8 chevaux, 40 hommes" (eight horses, 
forty men), and he sank down into the straw and went 
to sleep. All night long and until noon the train rumbled, 
for such trains move slowly, and finally they arrived 
at the Revigny railroad head. A breakfast of hot coffee, 
cheese, and hard army bread, and a crowded barn to 
sleep the rest of the day in (for new troops moving 
toward Verdun are "fed up" on sleep, seeing that they 
will not get much after they arrive), and Joseph is 
loaded into another box-car to be transported to the vil- 
lage of X — , only six kilometres behind Verdun, where 
the division stops a day to get itself together for the 
night march up through the hills and down into the 
trenches. 

So it comes about that the next night, as our little 
Red-Cross cars mount the Verdun hill among the con- 
voys and amid the dust, we overtake and pass Joseph 
and his comrades trudging along toward the battle- 
front, from which they know many of their number will 
not return. Despite that realization, which shows plainly 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 67 

enough in their faces, they find courage to recognize us 
and shout a passing greeting. 

"Remember, I am billeted for a return ride in the 
helle petite voiture," cries Joseph, and though he was 
speaking in fun his wish later came true. 

At Cabaret Rouge we saw the last of them — for a 
time. Having reached this point by the same road over 
which the ambulances, ammunition-convoys, and ravi- 
taillement travel, they turned sharply to the left and dis- 
appeared into the seven-foot-deep boyoiis, or connecting- 
trenches, which form the protected path for men afoot 
in the dangerous zone between the poste de secoiirs and 
the first-line trenches. 

By way of explanation it may be well to note that 
the so-much- talked-of "first, second, and third-line 
trenches" are more theoretical than real on a battle- 
front like the Verdun sector. There are trenches every- 
where for a depth of four or five miles behind the fight- 
ing front, except Vv^here they have been destroyed by 
shell fire, but the trenches behind the first line are for 
communication and to fall back on. It is only in the first 
line that the infantrymen fight. In a sector bombarded 
like Verdun the real battlefront consists of that first line, 
whether it is holding out in trenches, shell-holes, or forts, 
and behind it the artillery. The space between the lines 
and batteries is where the American Ambulance works ; 
but it is only on rare occasions that any of us go closer 
than within two kilometres of the first line. Ordinarily, 
we load our cars with wounded who have been brought 
on stretchers through the boyous to Cabaret, but occa- 
sionally special calls come asking that a single car be sent 



68 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

to a certain more advanced spot on a certain road, and 
it is these calls that are most dangerous, as sometimes 
we get in direct line of vision with the German artillery 
observation posts. Sometimes on such trips we find the 
wounded men on stretchers in a ditch by the road with 
a stretcher-bearer keeping guard over them, but fre- 
quently it also happens that we have to hunt for the 
wounded men ourselves and find them lying helpless by 
the roadside unattended by anyone. These are the 
most dangerous and at the same time the most interest- 
ing calls, especially at night, as the red and green rockets 
look very near, and amid the occasional lulls in the artil- 
lery fire we can distinctly hear the rattle of the machine- 
guns and the popping of the rifles. So accustomed are 
our ears to the louder noise of the cannon, that the rifle 
shots seem low-toned and muffled like the sound of an 
army of woodpeckers tapping on telegraph poles. The 
machine-guns sound like packages of small firecrackers 

touched off under a tin pail. 

* * * 

The roads to such advanced points are always badly 
torn up by shells, making it necessary to go a great part 
of the distance in low speed, and night driving is com- 
plicated by the fact that when artillery moves in this 
zone it moves where possible at a trot or gallop and cedes 
the road to nobody. Back of the lines ambulances are 
often given the road by courtesy, but under fire the 
right of way belongs to the artillery, come what may. 
When night driving is further complicated by gas, and 
we have to wear our masks, which are not easy to see 
and hear through, the danger of being wrecked by the 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 69 

galloping artillery is often greater than the danger of 
being hit by shells. 

But let us return to Joseph and his comrades, who 
disappeared from our view in the boyous leading from 
Cabaret. We know what happened to them only from 
piecing together their descriptions in the evacuation hos- 
pital later. As they went further into the din the stench 
and noise kept increasing. The French curtain-fire 
shrieked over their heads, protecting their advance and 
crashing above the German trenches now only a few hun- 
dred yards distant. German shells were breaking all 
around, and in many places the hoyoii became only an 
unprotected mass of overturned earth. Some of Joseph's 
comrades began to drop around him, for the division 
suffered a ten per cent loss before they ever reached the 
line and began fighting (yet in Napoleon's time, the 
books on military tactics advised a leader to fall back 
when his losses amounted to over five per cent). 

It was midnight when the division reached the line 
of shell-craters and hastily reconstructed earthworks 
that had once been the first-line trenches — for neither 
French nor German have any real trenches, in the proper 
sense of the word, on this front. They simply dig into 
the shell-torn ground and hold on. 

Crouching elbow to elbow with his comrades, Joseph 
waited for orders. His particular part in an attack is 
that of ''nettoyeur des tranchees," which means "trench- 
cleaner" in literal English; but he uses a long knife and 
an automatic pistol instead of a broom, and it is the 
German trenches and not the French that he cleans. Jo- 
seph is small, wiry, muscular, capable of lightning-like 



70 DIARY OF SECTION VIII 

rapidity in his movements. He follows immediately 
behind the bayonets, leaping into the carried trench or 
position, shooting and slashing as he leaps, pistol in left 
hand and knife in right, fighting it out to the death with 
those whom the bullets and bayonets overlooked as they 
swept onward. Joseph isn't so strong for the pistol, 
which he uses principally to protect himself, but he is a 
wonder with the knife. Before the war he was a book- 
keeper at Paris, and his most brutal diversion was the 
mild French form of association football on Sunday 
afternoons. He is engaged to be married, is a lover of 
flowers, and sings charming ballads to the accompaniment 
of the guitar. 

This was the Joseph who leaped after his comrades, 
shrieking like a madman, when attack began. 

Three minutes afterward he found himself standing 
knee-deep among writhing bodies, covered from head to 
foot with blood, his own blood and that of a dozen Ger- 
mans. He was slightly wounded in the shoulder, but 
he had done his work. 

Thirty seconds later he was half buried by an ex- 
ploding shell, his hip and left arm being shattered. 

Thirty hours later his surviving comrades found 
him, lying among the corpses, still conscious and moan- 
ing for water. 

As soon as it was dark enough the stretcher-bearers 
brought him back to Cabaret, where a hypodermic injec- 
tion mercifully eased his suffering while the temporary 
bandages applied by his comrades were removed and 
replaced by better dressings. 

So he had his wish, though he was too far gone to 



AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 71 

know it. We brought him back to Dugny in one of our 
''belles petites voitiires/' and one of our own men rode 
inside (against all rules and precedents) to make it a 
little easier for him in case he should regain conscious- 
ness. 

It makes it infinitely more real and personal and in- 
finitely more terrible — this transportation of men whose 
names we know, of friends with whom we were sinsfinsf 
and playing football in the sunshine only a few days ago 
at La Veuve — it makes our work harder in a way, but 
at the same time more worth while. 

Joseph is going to get well. Also he is going to have 
the croix de guerre and the medaille militaire. As soon 
as he is strong enough to survive the railroad journey 
he will complete the last stage of his Odyssy as he began 
it, in a little box-car marked "8 Chevaux, 40 Hommes." 

For Joseph the great war is over. He will be ten- 
derly cared for in some big hospital in the interior; his 
sweetheart will come to visit him in the ward, and as 
soon as he is able to hobble about on crutches they will 
be married. Her husband will be a hero, he is one of the 
men who has saved France. But he will be a cripple 
for life. 

Multiply Joseph by thousands of other Josephs who 
have gone through like experiences — then add the tragic 
background of the still other thousands of Josephs who 
will never come back to their sweethearts, and you may 
begin to have some idea of what it means to hold Verdun. 

^h ^p •P 

The End 



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BOSTON, MASS. 






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*0 -7^ • '^C'^^VZ. ^^T * 111 Thomson Park Drive 

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